JNPR: It's All Gone Wrong
by I Own A Clock
Summary: A familiar story. The same teams. Different characters. Merely changing the characters with a story can change its outcome; its events; drastically. For in a world where side characters become main characters, and where main characters become villains, anything is possible. A story going through the events of RWBY with a cast that's been shuffled.
1. Chapter 1

_Legends. Stories scattered through time. Mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains. However, sometimes, as stories pass from one mouth to another, the stories change, forming new, different legends. This is one such tale. A familiar story, but the details sewn anew. Something as simple as the heroes within the story changing creates a new story; and everything changes._

* * *

A quite night. A peaceful night. Not a single sound of nature, and even the noises of civilization had died down. It was on nights like these that the young man walking down a quiet, peaceful street chose to act. The police weren't on edge, the pedestrians were at a minimum, everyone had their guards down.

The ideal time to strike.

The young man was flanked on each side by his hired goons, bought from some nobody in some nothing nightclub. Four mobsters; on their own they were nothing, but at the very least they were cheap and they looked intimidating. That was the most that the young man could ask for from this nothing city.

As the five men approached their target, a Dust store at the end of a street, the young man brushed his black hair out of his eyes. Eye contact was ideal for intimidation. Everything about his appearance was designed to force others to look into his eyes. A simple eastern outfit: black shoes, white pants, and a green tailcoat. So simple, and yet the outfit served its purpose: to make any who beheld it look at the face of the young man wearing it. They would see his black hair, but more than that they would see a simple pink highlight. This would distract them for a few moments before they finally looked into the young eastern man's eyes. Any who gazed into the windows of this young man's soul would find themselves captured: magenta eyes were an oddity in any culture, but more importantly any who looked into the young man's eyes saw one thing: hatred. A deep-seated loathing of everything around him.

And why would he feel anything but hatred for this nothing world? What had it done for him? All it had ever brought him was sadness. A never ending sadness that warped him and his only friend in life. And yet, despite this hatred of his, the crushing sensations around him, the young man felt renewed. He had a purpose now. A new purpose, one that would lead to a better world for him and his friend. He would do anything to create such a world; in which he could see his friend's smiling face, always. Even if it meant he had to work alongside the people he had long envied, and still felt nothing but loathing for.

The young man looked up at the sign of the Store. _From Dust Til Dawn_. A pun: a play on words: switching the word Dust with Dusk would create an ordinary expression. The young man couldn't help but be annoyed as he pushed open the door and walked inside. Most Dust shops were closed at this time of night, or at the very least knew to have hired goons such as his own to help keep the merchandise safe. Stores that knew these things were much less likely to be robbed; a fact that the owner of this store would soon learn the full consequences of: for he stayed open until the dead of night, with not a single man to protect him.

The young man came to a stop in front of the old shopkeeper behind the counter of the desk. As his goons came into positions, the young man looked around. Tubes filled with Dust, crystals within the desk, bags, boxes, and jars of it all scattered thoughout the store, all within plain sight. _A treasure trove for shoplifters. It's as though the owner was asking for it all to be stolen._

"Please, just take my lien and leave," an old, raspy voice begged. The young man turned his eyes upon the old shopkeeper, holding his shivering hands in the air. A pale green shirt and a red apron; balding, grey hair, and eyes squinted so much that they appeared to be closed. Out of the corner of his eye the young man saw a gun pointed at the shopkeeper's head. He hadn't asked for that, but it made then next part much easier. Perhaps at least one of the men he had hired would be useful. The squinted eyes of his made it hard to tell where the shopkeeper was looking, but there was one simple way to guarantee that the shopkeeper would look at him. The young man set the container he was carrying onto the counter in front of him. Normally carrying such a thing would be the work of the hired help, but such was part of the young man's plan. The shopkeeper looked down to the container below him, before looking back up and instantly flinching.

There it was. The same response all had to gazing into Lie Ren's eyes. The same response he had seen his entire life, the same horrified face that any would make upon seeing the endless hatred that Ren felt for the world. The only person who could resist such a reaction was his one friend; and it was for that one friend that Ren went through the actions he did. As the shopkeeper stared in horrified awe, Ren opened his mouth to speak:

"We aren't here for lien." A simple sentence, yet spoken with such malice that even Ren's own goons found themselves chilled. Ren had never been much of a talker, but the sheer emotion- the cold hatred- behind his voice was more than enough to speak for him. "Grab the Dust."

Upon hearing his order, the goons stepped into motion: one man would remain at the counter and make the shopkeeper place the Dust crystals within the container, another would drain the Dust-filled tubes on the right side of the store, while the last two took care of the tubes on the left side. It was a simple plan, but Ren couldn't help but feel as though the hired help would find some way to screw it all up. Such was the confidence he had in the nobodies that he had hired.

As the shopkeeper moved to place a Dust crystal within the container, Ren grabbed it out of his hand before walking a few steps away, making the motion to carry on with his empty hand. The crystal felt so light in his hand, but the sheer power that it contained made it more valuable than any-

"Alright, kid, put your hands where I can see them." Ren looked to the right side of the store as the goon assigned to that side drew his sword and pointed it towards the back. There weren't supposed to be any customers at this time of night. Who would come to a Dust shop in the dead of night except to rob the place? _A kid...?_ Ren smirked. _Likely a shoplifter, as I thought. It's interesting how thoughts like that come to reality. Surely even this trash can manage a single shoplifting child._ He turned his attention back to the dust crystal.

These small crystals were all part of a bigger scheme. It would take tens of thousands of them to progress even the slightest towards Ren's new goal, but he would find a way forward. He had no choice but to keep-

 _Thud!_ Ren looked down where the incompetent idiot had fallen; no, he had crashed just below the front window of the store: he had been launched. _A kid..._ Ren looked up at the goon standing beside him at the counter, who looked back at Ren with a confused expression on his face. This was the same goon who had initially held the gun at the shopkeeper. To think that Ren had almost considered hiring him worthwhile. What a waste of time and money. Ren tilted his head toward the back of the store, where the child in question was supposed to be, and the mobster ran into position. "Freeze!"

As the man went soaring thought the front window, Ren decided that it was time to make his escape. Even if Ren was able to deal with the child, the civilians outside surely would call the police, and the police would surely arrive too soon to allow Ren the chance to escape if he did not take the initiative now. As the remaining mobsters rushed outside, Ren came to the conclusion that the "child" had gone through the window as well. He placed the Dust crystal into its intended container before closing the container back up. The shopkeeper glared at Ren, perhaps hoping to deter him from leaving, perhaps even thinking of taking action to stop him. Ren's eyes turned that defiance away.

As Ren stepped outside, one of the men he had hired came crashing to the sidewalk in front of him. Ren looked around. One of the three remaining men had been smashed face first into the asphalt that made up the street, but the other two were missing. Where had they gone? Surely they had not run away. Two unconscious bodies landing on either side of him answered that thought.

Ren looked back up at the child who had foiled his plans for tonight. A small teenage girl. A small teenage girl holding a gigantic, mechanical, red scythe larger than any of the hired help. Ren was starting to see where trouble had arose. The young girl before him wore a black mini-dress with red accents, and a red hood, which spread out into a giant, and surely impractical, cape. She also wore black boots with red accents, which struck Ren as strange, for boots didn't quite fit in with the rest of the- _I have more important things to worry about now._

Ren pulled out his weapon, Stormflower, an green SMG with a sickle sticking out of the bottom of its barrel, and opened fire on the young girl. He would have pulled out the other Stormflower, which stayed within his sleeve, if he had been trying to kill the girl, or if he were not carrying a container of Dust in his right hand. Besides, the bullets he fired were not meant to kill her; that would leave an unnecessary mess behind; no, the bullets were meant to scare the girl into looking away from him so that he could evade her.

The moment the girl moved to dodge the bullets, Ren made a break for a nearby ladder, which would lead him to the rooftop he had chosen for his pickup. Ren was a very fast young man. With his childhood, he had to be. Ren was also dexterous: while most people wouldn't be able to ascend such a ladder in just a few short seconds, he was able to do so using only one hand. As he reached the top, he found himself face-to-face with the young girl.

 _What? How?_ Despite the fact that he should have felt shocked by this change, Ren was merely annoyed, and he let it be shown on his face. His pink eyes met her silver eyes, and she gave a smug smirk. The girl backed up before pointing her scythe towards Ren, shouting out, "So, are you just not going to talk or...?"

Ren paused before deciding to just let the next events play out in silence. There was a sudden mechanical roaring, the kind of sound that only an engine could make. The girl looked away, just for one moment, and Ren moved to strike.

One chop to the back of the neck should have been enough to knock her out, but when his hand made contact, it merely bounced off. _Of course she has her Aura unlocked. Why wouldn't she?_ Ren thought before instead grabbing the girl by her short crimson hair and slamming her face into the ground. The girl's Aura wouldn't allow the blow to hurt her, but that wasn't the purpose of the action. Ren kicked the scythe away as it dropped out of her hands and made a break for the sound of the engine. Ren smirked as he hear the girl cry out "Hey!" in protest.

A Bullhead came roaring into view: his getaway vehicle of choice. Its nature as a VTOL aircraft made it ideal for a quick getaway. He leaped from the rooftop into its side doors, before giving the pilot the order to fly away. Ren looked back toward the girl scrambling to get her weapon back. Were he to open fire with his Stormflowers, the small area of the rooftop would make it nearly impossible to evade. Besides that, the girl wasn't even looking at him. She'd be dead before she even realized what was going on, Ren reasoned before silently deciding against it. While the girl was certainly an annoyance, the odds of the two of them crossing paths again was unlikely. Ren had nothing to gain from killing her. He closed the Bullhead's doors before setting down the container full of Dust and moving up to the cockpit and sitting in the passenger seat.

"A Huntress?" The female pilot, the woman who had given Ren's life a new meaning, asked.

Ren thought about it. Although the girl was carrying around a weapon more suited to fighting off the Creatures of Grimm than robbers, and while she did have her Aura unlocked, she definitely lacked the experience that came with being a fully trained Huntress. "No, just some girl." It wasn't necessarily a lie, just as saying the opposite wouldn't necessarily be true.

"I think you don't understand the situation you've put us in."

 _What?_

Something slammed into the side of the Bullhead, knocking it off course and almost knocking Ren out of his seat. He looked over at the pilot, who looked back with a glare that put his own to shame.

 _What was that? Surely the girl didn't jump onto the Bullhead, that would be-_

Another impact, this time an explosion could be heard. They were being fired upon. "What are we waiting for, GO!" Ren shouted at the pilot, who only smiled back at him before accelerating, leaving the girl behind.

Ren sighed. Why had things turned out this way?

"'An easy job'?"

Ren's eye twitched as his words from earlier that night were parroted back to him.

"'A simple plan'?"

Literally everything had gone wrong. What happened?

"'I'll only need four of them, at most'?"

... Those fools. The moment that Ren next saw any of them again, they were all dead.

* * *

Ruby Rose wasn't quite sure what she had done wrong. She let her eyes off of the black haired thief for only a moment, and then everything spiraled out of control. Something hit her neck, her face got close to the ground, and then she got slammed into the rooftop and Crescent Rose, her scythe, was gone. Next thing she knew, there was a Bullhead, and a Huntress had shown up to stop it, and then Ruby was shooting at the Bullhead to stop it and then the Bullhead was gone. And now Ruby was sitting in a dark room with a single light while the Huntress who had shown up was lecturing her on her "irresponsible" and "dangerous" behavior.

What happened?

"... but... there is someone here who would like to meet you," the huntress stated before moving out of the way of the only door out of the dark room. A man walked in, holding a plate of cookies and a mug. He had a stern look on his face, fitting with the glare upon the Huntress' face.

"Ruby Rose." The man leaned in to get a better look at Ruby's face. "You..." Ruby didn't know what to expect from the man. Probably more lecturing. "... have silver eyes."

 _What_. Ruby wasn't sure how to respond to that. It wasn't lecturing. It wasn't praise, either. "Um..."

"How would you like to come to Beacon Academy?" the man asked.

 _"W-what?!"_ Ruby thought before realizing she had also said it out loud. Going to Beacon was her dream, it was one of the many things that she was looking forward to in life, but- "Um... I'm planning on going there in one year, but-"

"Nonsense. Your older sister is the infamous second year Yang Xiao-Long, correct?"

 _Wha- how does he know all of this?!_ "Y-yeah, but I'm not sure how-"

"Then it's decided!" The man set down the plate of cookies and took a sip of his mug. "You'll be attending Beacon Academy starting this month. Congratulations."

The Huntress standing in the corner finally spoke up, "Ozpin, I think you're-"

 _"Ozpin?!"_ For the first time tonight, Ruby looked more carefully at the two people in the room. The man's face had seemed familiar, but- no, there it was! Those glasses! Those eyes! That mug! How had she not realized that the black-and-green-suited man before her was actually the headmaster of Beacon Academy, the legendary Ozpin?! And if that man really was Ozpin, then that meant that the blonde woman wearing ridiculous clothes could be none other than Glynda Goodwitch, one of the teachers at Beacon!

Glynda glared at Ruby, as though she had heard the insult within Ruby's thoughts, but more likely because Glynda had been interrupted. "... You're acting rashly again," she continued. "You keep accepting strange students into the school. First a stowaway from Vacuo, then some overly enthusiastic girl off the street, that strange man with the bowler hat, and now some girl who's not even out of Signal Academy?" She crossed her arms and gave both Ruby and Ozpin a stern look. "When will it end? How far will you go, Ozpin?"

Ozpin paused for a moment before looking to Ruby and smirking. "It's my school, Glynda. I know what I'm doing."

 _... I guess I'm going to Beacon now._

* * *

As the airship approached Beacon Academy, Ruby sighed. She would be starting over completely this year. No friends, her sister was one year above her, and she didn't even know the layout of the school. This felt wrong. She should have been excited to be going into Beacon, but the change was so sudden that it was hard to feel excited.

How hard was it going to be for her to make new friends here? Ruby had always had trouble making new friends; conversations weren't really her forte. It would be nice if life just let new friends into your life without any of the fuss that came with-

"Salutations!"

Ruby nearly jumped out of her skin before looking at the girl who had walked up to her. Green eyes, orange hair, a white, grey, and green dress, a pink bow atop her head, a great big smile, and she was standing far too close for Ruby's liking. "Um... Hey..." Ruby responded before backing away slowly, only for the girl to close the distance in a single step. "Really friendly, huh?" Ruby awkwardly joked, desperately trying to avoid eye contact.

"'Friendly'?" The girl's face turned inquisitive as she leaned in even closer to Ruby's face, which in turn caused Ruby to back away further.

"Um..." Socially awkward didn't begin to cover this.

"Are we friends?"

... _I guess I asked for this._ "I, uh, I guess?" Ruby said, immediately regretting it, because she knew what the response would be. She didn't have to become friends with just any weirdo, and yet here she was.

The girl's face lit up, forming a big smile, as she raised her arms and shouted, "Ahaha! Sensational!," attracting the attention of everyone in earshot as the girl pulled Ruby in for a hug.

 _Oh no._ Ruby looked around and saw all eyes on them. This is how Ruby was going to be remembered, wasn't it?

"We can paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys!" Ruby cringed. If anyone else had said it, it may have been a tempting thought, but here she was, getting hugged by a strange redhead and regretting all of her life choices. Why did she go to _Dust til Dawn_ that fateful night?

 _Well. This is my life now,_ Ruby thought to herself, with a huff. ... Maybe she shouldn't be turning this into a bad thing. Maybe it could be a good thing. A new friend, just like that, why was she upset? "Yeah, sure..." She put her arms up and pushed her new friend away. "I'm Ruby. It's nice to meet you?"

"My name is Penny! It's a pleasure to meet you!" Penny leaned forward, arms outstretched for another hug. "... friend!"

 _... Man, I hope I get more friends than just this._

* * *

A faunus girl stared at the two weird girls hugging. What a bunch of freaks. That's how they make friends? Obviously, the two of them had no real experience with it. But that was okay. No one could possibly hope to be as perfect as her. She looked around at the students heading to Beacon. None of them looked as good as her, obviously, and yet everyone's eyes were fixated not on her, but the very loud friends standing across from her.

It was an injustice. All eyes naturally belong to her. Everyone needed to know the greatest woman who ever lived, Neon Katt, was standing just within-

"Ugh..." A blonde haired boy stumbled into Neon, knocking her onto her butt. _WHAT?!_ "Oh... sorry... UGH!" The boy's cheeks puffed out, and he started running away.

"Some people..." Neon growled as she stood up. Or rather, tried to stand up. The fact that she was wearing roller blades made standing from a sitting position a little difficult. Neon glared at her roller blades, considering taking them off-

 _What is that...?_ A yellow substance on her roller blades. _No..._ It wasn't vomit. _No..._ It couldn't be vomit. _NO..._ There was no way it was vomit. "No..." It was probably vomit. "No...!" It was vomit. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

* * *

 **And that's about where I felt like cutting off this chapter. Sorry if the pacing seems a little weird, it's been a while since I last wrote fiction and I got it all written in one night.**

 **So, basically, I got the idea for this while I was bored at work. Just if you switched a couple of characters around, and changed a few people's ages, how different the story could be. Meaning that some people who weren't important (read: Neon Katt) were suddenly main characters. When I thought of the changes while at work, some of them were so funny to me that I actually started laughing out loud. In other words, in order to make my embarrassment at work justified, I HAD to write this story.**

 **I'm actually curious what genres I should tag this under, because I am planning on making it comedy-based, but I can't help but feel that this is more of a parody. And at the same time, I'm planning on writing this all the way to Season 3, so perhaps Fantasy? I don't know.**

 **If you could, I would appreciate a review, you know, let me know what I can do to improve, what you feel I'm lacking in this, even what you thought of the chapter. ... Maybe help me pick the genres, I don't know.**


	2. Chapter 2

Roman Torchwick awoke to the sound of a teenage girl screaming bloody murder. While to most people this would have been a troubling and perhaps traumatizing awakening, to the man sitting on board the airship, it was a pretty normal awakening. Things like this were an average occurrence in the underbelly of Vale, the sad, cruel place that he had called home for most of his life. Roman felt that, in a morbid way, he was going to miss waking up to the sounds of screaming; he would miss perpetually watching his own back; he would miss the scum and rabble of Vale looking up to him: seeing him as the top dog. ... There was nothing all that morbid about that last one, but he would still miss it.

Roman's new life was about to begin. Beacon Academy. It was odd: as a child he had dreams of becoming a Hunter, of going out and making a difference in the world, but growing up, his hopes had been dashed: he would never join the ranks of Hunters, he would never be anything more than street trash. And after thirty years, after Roman had finally made a name for himself, after he had long since given up his childhood dream, here he was: a man on his way to becoming a Hunter.

Roman probably wouldn't last long as a Hunter; he was already thirty years old, approaching the end of the prime of his life; if not already past it. But still. The opportunity was there. A chance that Roman wouldn't- no, couldn't pass up.

The airship he was riding on was still moving, but at least it looked like it was getting close to stopping. Roman wasn't a fan of riding in vehicles as a passenger. He preferred driving them himself. Cars, Bullhead transports, airships: Roman's life as a criminal had given him the knowledge he needed to drive just about anything, so sitting around in a moving vehicle made him uncomfortable. If he was the one piloting the airship, he would know everything to be okay, but who knows what moron they put up there? But no, they couldn't have students flying airships. Even if said students were ace pilots.

 _Student, huh?_ It was an interesting thought. Why had he been chosen to be a student at Beacon? Why had Ozpin chosen him of all people, rather than any of the naive little brats that wanted to be Hunters? And a student? Roman was old enough to be a teacher.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe Ozpin saw someone with real experience behind him; someone who knew what the worst parts of Remnant looked like; someone who had seen the good and the bad. So maybe Roman would become a Hunter, immediately become a professor, and spend out the rest of his days being the teacher to give students reality checks.

 _Wishful thinking..._ Thirty long years of life had taught Roman one thing: it was never going to be easy. There were no happy endings where the good guy won and got the girl and lived happily ever after: that wasn't the ending, that was the happy moments before the end of the second act arrived. No, Roman Torchwick would be lucky if this didn't turn out to be a trap to kill him once and for all. But still. It was a chance that he couldn't pass up. He owed it to his younger self.

"Hey, wake up, man." Someone, a boy, nudged Roman's shoulder. They touched his suit. His VERY expensive suit. A month ago he would have beaten the guilty party senseless, but that would likely end any chances of having a normal life at Beacon. Violence on the first day? What a scandalous idea.

Roman grabbed for the arm of whoever was nudging him before opening his eyes. "Don't touch the suit." It was a boy alright. A blonde, muscular, teenage boy who was barely wearing a shirt. "What do you want?"

The boy gave a confident smirk in return before easily breaking Roman's grip on him with a simple tug away. "Nothing, we're just about to land, so you probably shouldn't be sleeping right now."

Roman examined the boy in front of him in contrast to himself. The boy's blonde messy hair looked nothing like Roman's slick, orange hair; Roman wore a white suit, black slacks and a bowler hat, while the boy wore an unbuttoned collared shirt and blue jeans. Add in the difference in age, and the two of them couldn't look any more different. Something else rubbed Roman the wrong way about the boy in front of-

 _Ah, a tail. That explains it._ So, that meant that the boy in front of him was actually a mangy, disgusting monkey faunus. And said faunus had touched him. Roman cringed. "I see..."

The boy seemed to catch on right away to the gesture, but reacted in a way that Roman hadn't seen coming: he sat down next to Roman before turning toward him and offering a hand to shake. "I'm Sun. Sun Wukong." He flashed a wide, arrogant grin. "I can see you don't like us faunus much."

Roman considered his options. He could just ignore the monkey: Beacon Academy was a big place, from what Torchwick had heard, it was unlikely that the two would ever meet again. Unlikely, and yet... It was more than just unlikely that Roman would ever end up going to Beacon to begin with. The odds of the situations around him made him feel almost certain that the two were going to more than just meet each other again. His other option was to try and force a conversation between the two of them, which Roman was certain would not stick due to his increasing desire to walk away from the mangy monkey. His last option was to just respond. It didn't have to be a conversation; just answering.

"Roman. And honestly, no." Roman responded with a smirk of his own, hoping that that would be enough to end the conversation before it began.

Roman had never liked faunus. The White Fang had given Roman enough trouble throughout his life to never want to talk to a faunus again. They felt as though they were superior to humans, even if all they claimed was a desire for equality. Also, faunus typically smelled bad. As animals usually did.

Despite Roman's attempts at ending the conversation, the monkey insisted on continuing to talk. "Well, that sucks. It's my first day as a student here at Beacon. You're probably a teacher here, right?"

"Nope. Student."

That suprised the monkey for a moment, before he continued anyways,"Oh. Cool. Yeah, I'm actually a transfer student from Vacuo. Didn't think I'd be coming here, but then Professor Ozpin came and told me that-"

"You met Ozpin too?" Roman asked, shocked by the revelation. Was Roman's situation not actually that special? Was it all just a joke? Was Ozpin really just going around to recruit students from all over the place?

"'Too'? Oh, you met Ozpin? Alright," the monkey responded with a shrug. "Yeah, what did you think of him? He seemed kind of... weird, you know?"

Roman's thoughts went back to that fateful night he first met Ozpin. _"You... have green eyes."_ "Hm. Strange really doesn't even come close to it."

"Yeah, I was talking to Sage about that and- oh yeah, maybe you should meet Sage." The monkey stood up before waving at another student on the airship. "HEY, SAGE! GET OVER HERE!"

 _Probably another faunus. I'm already at my limit with one; this is not what I want to deal with right now._ "I think I'll be okay," Roman said before standing up to try and walk away. Operative word being "try".

"Yeah, this guy's Roman. Roman, that's Sage. Hes from Mistral, and he was going to go into Haven Academy like I was- long story- but then he met Ozpin, just like you and me, and now he's going to Beacon: just like you and me."

Roman sighed before turning around to meet the monkey's friend. He should have ended this conversation before it began, but-

Roman was suddenly face-to-face with two golden eyes, glaring into his soul. Two golden eyes that were FAR too close for Roman's comfort. He took a few steps back before examining the eyes' owner. Another boy, dark skinned, with green hair, wearing an unbuttoned white coat and no shirt underneath, showing off his chest and neck tattoos. All of these details made Roman very uncomfortable. This discomfort was aided by the fact that the boy was choosing to stand as close to Roman as possible.

"Personal space." Roman gave this "Sage" a good shove to try and knock him off-balance, but when Roman's hand met his chest, the boy didn't even budge, he just kept glaring into Roman's eyes. Creepy. "Is there something wrong with him?" Roman turned to ask the monkey watching the encounter with a smirk.

"Sage? Nah, he's just not good at talking to people." The monkey responded before pulling his friend away, to the relief of Roman. "Like, really not good at it." While the monkey continued, Roman's eyes turned to Sage to make sure he didn't get any closer. At the very least, it didn't look like Sage was a faunus as well. He would have been more comfortable if it weren't for the fact that Sage was carrying a giant sword on his back. "Anyways, yeah, like I was saying, me and Sage were talking- well, I guess I was talking and Sage was just nodding, but I guess that's kind of like talking- about how weird it was that Ozpin showed up to both Vacuo and Mistral and told us to go to Beacon. And we thought that was weird, but now you're here and you're going to Beacon too, even though you're, like, way older than us. Weird, right?"

The faunus just didn't know when to shut up, did he? Talkative as he was, though, he did have as a point; which was good, if he had talked as much as he did without saying something of worth, Roman would have had to slap him. At the least.

There was a familiar sound that rang throughout the airship; a sound that Roman had gotten used to over all his years of piloting. The airship had finally come to a stop, the captain had come onto the intercom to tell all that it was time to leave the airship, leave the two brats behind, and go on with his life.

"Well. This has been an educational experience, but I think it's time I take my leave. Don't want to keep anyone waiting." Roman turned and began walking towards the exit ramp. He heard two sets of footsteps behind him. _Ah, right. There's only one way off of this thing._ He turned to look back at the two teenagers following him. "So, do either of you know where we're supposed to be going once we get off of this?"

"No." Sage's voice was deep, but not quite as deep as Roman had expected. He was still obviously a teenager.

"Nope. But that's why we're not the first ones leaving. We'll just follow the people who look like they know where they're going." The monkey sped up to walk to the right of Roman, while Sage mirrored... Sun... on Roman's left. To a third party observer, the three of them would have looked like a team. Like friends.

So, it looked like the three of them had suddenly become "friends", whether Roman wanted to or not. Perhaps that was the kind of person that Sun was. He would get what he wanted, even if he had to drag Roman kicking and screaming. He pretty much already did, forcing Roman into a conversation and introducing him to Sage despite visibly wanting nothing to do with them. That said, he could imagine having worse friends. He had had worse friends than an arrogant monkey and a scary black teenager with a giant sword and no sense of personal space.

Roman smiled. Not a smirk or a grin, but a genuine smile. He had just got here and he already was starting to get a crew together. One of the things he would have missed about being a criminal, solved before he even got off the airship. "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

Beacon Academy. The start of this young man's new life. It was interesting; he had always assumed that he would end up here, but... something about his being here felt... empty. A pyrrhic victory, of sorts. He had earned his way in, but...

 _"You... have grey eyes... just like your father..."_

A month ago, he would have been amazed at being accepted into Beacon, but the past month had not treated him well. Mercury Black reflected on what he had had at the beginning of the month that he didn't have anymore.

A father, but he wasn't really going to miss that.

A home, but he probably wouldn't have wanted to go back there even if it hadn't burned to the ground.

Legs.

Mercury still had legs, but they weren't his anymore. The final fight against his father, Marcus Black had rendered his useless. Ozpin had watched the whole thing go down, and in the end he paid for Mercury's new legs and decided to enroll Mercury at Beacon. How could Mercury had turned the offer down? What did he have to go back to?

Mercury looked around at his new fellow Hunter-and-Huntresses-in-training. A lot of them looked confused. They probably hadn't taken the preliminary courses that Ozpin had made him take so that he would have an easy time finding his way around the school. There were a lot of cute girls, at the least. They would be fun to bully- no, no, no. Mercury was not a bully. They would be fun to mess with.

A faunus girl was running down the ramp of the airship, carrying her shoes in her hands. She clearly wasn't paying attention to what was going on around her. It wasn't often that an opportunity like this came up.

As the girl ran past Mercury, he stuck his leg out, tripping her. As she flung her arms around to try and get her balance back, he smacked one of the girl's shoes out of her hands. It didn't really matter where it went, the fact that it was gone was the important part. He kept walking as she fell on her face. She wouldn't have even known who had tripped her. Girls like her cared more about their accessories than getting revenge.

He stood next to a light post nearby and silently watched the faunus girl.

* * *

Neon was having a VERY bad day. First those two girls on the airship had stolen everyone's attention from her, then she got knocked onto her butt by someone who threw up on her roller skates, and now here she was, face first on the ground because she tripped over something. Literally everything had gone wrong.

This was supposed to be her new life. She was going to go to Beacon, instead of Atlas Academy, to make everyone know her name like they did back home. She was going to be the one to replace all of the big names here in Beacon; and then after she graduated she would do the same with Vacuo and Mistral. Once she had done that, once she was the celebrity everyone knew and loved all over the world, Neon's life would be complete. From that point on, it would be nothing but fun and games.

 _Yeah... I can't give up now..._ Neon lifted herself slowly onto her hands and knees. _That's why I need to keep going... So I can party all day and all night and everyone will know who I am..._ But first Neon needed to find her roller blades! That's how they would know her! Neon jumped to her feet, startling the girl behind her who was trying to see if Neon was alright. EVERYONE IN REMNANT WOULD KNOW ABOUT NEON KATT, THE RAINBOW KITTY WHO BEAT UP GRIMM USING ONLY HER SKATES AND GLOW STICKS! _THEY WERE GOING TO LOVE HER!_ _ **EVERYONE WAS GOING TO LOVE HER!**_

"YEAHHH!" Neon roared. She wouldn't let anything stop her from accomplishing her dream! Not the boy who knocked her over, not the girls who had stolen everyone's attention, not even the fact that one of her roller skates appeared to be missing. "WHAT?! WHERE DID IT GO?!"

"Um... Where did what go?"

"MY SKATES ARE GONE! I HAD THEM BOTH BEFORE I LOST THEM!" But where had they gone? One of the two was right on the floor next to where she fell, but Neon had let go of the other one while she was falling- for some reason. Where was it?!

"O-okay, you don't need to yell, I think, I'm right here..."

Neon turned to face the voice of the girl talking to her- _OH_. "NOT YOU AGAIN!" It was one of the girls from earlier, the one wearing a black dress! Why was today just going around in circles?!

The girl looked both scared and confused. Good! WHY WAS SHE HERE?! "A-Again? I just- I don't- you're not making any-"

"LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU DID THIS!" Neon grabbed the one skate she could find and stormed away.

* * *

"I don't... what did I do?" Ruby took a few steps to follow the faunus girl, but stopped. She wasn't even sure what had happened, but apparently she did something to get her angry. "I'm sorry for whatever I did!"

Ruby genuinely didn't know what she had done to deserve that response. She saw that the cat faunus had fallen on her face, so she went over to see if she was okay. Then the girl jumped up and started yelling really loudly. And then the girl started yelling at her! What happened?! At least when she had fought that boy not too long ago, she knew where she could have gone wrong, but this time she had literally walked up to a girl she had never seen before and then got yelled at!

"What happened, Ruby?" Penny asked as she walked up to her.

"I- I don't know... She said something about skates and then she yelled at me. I just..."

"Skates?" Penny looked around. "Like that roller skate in the bush over there?"

Ruby turned to look at Penny, and then where Penny was pointing. There- that was probably it! A pink shoe with matching pink wheels, barely visible underneath a bush! "Oh! Yeah, that's probably it!" Ruby declared as she ran over to grab it. "How did you even see that, Penny?"

"I saw that boy knock it out of the girl's hand." Penny pointed, and Ruby's eyes followed to a light post. _What?_ "Oh, he's gone now."

Someone had knocked the skates out of the girl's hands? Why? Was she being bullied? On the first day? No wonder she was so angry... but... that wasn't really Ruby's fault, was it? So why was she the one getting yelled at? Ruby looked back down at the roller skate. Maybe she should just leave it here. She didn't want to get yelled at again; get accused of stealing it. But at the same time it seemed to be the only way to get the girl to calm down. She picked it up. Something was weird about this skate... The shoe part of the skate was mostly pink, but there was a weird yellow-

"Oh, gross!" Ruby dropped the shoe skates back on the ground. _Oh, ew, ew, ew, there was vomit on her shoes no wonder she was in a bad mood, ew, ew, ew._ Ruby hadn't touched the miscolored spot but she still wanted to wash her hands off. _Now- Now I really don't want to bring it to her! I don't want to touch that! But... but it's the only way I..._ Ruby looked back up to Penny for some kind of confirmation as to what to do.

Penny just stared back with a smile on her face. FANTASTIC.

 _Okay, let's calm down and think. Do I know where she's going? No. Do I know where she's supposed to be going? No. Do- Do I know where_ I'm _supposed to be going? N- No, I don't..._ "Penny, do you know where we're supposed to be going?"

"No!" Ruby's new friend responded, with a wide smile across her face.

 _Um... What should I do...?_ "Were you watching where that girl went?"

"Yes! I know what you're saying, Ruby!" Penny reached down and grabbed the shoe with one hand, grabbed Ruby with her other hand, and began marching in the direction the faunus took off. Ruby was pretty much being dragged along by now. "Let's go find her and give her her skate back!"

* * *

 **Writing this chapter was a real pain. I had to restart writing it three times because I wasn't satisfied with the way it was playing out. Couldn't decide on how to write Neon in this chapter, so I kind of pushed her off to the side until next chapter, so I can decide then.**

 **I changed the genres to Humor and Friendship because I feel that that's going a little closer to what I'm planning for this. This story isn't all that fantastical.**

 **In any event, I'd appreciate a review to let me know what you thought of this; what you think could be better; what you liked; WHAT YOU DIDN'T LIKE; you know. Thanks for reading!**

 **12/22/2016 Edit: Fixed some grammatical errors, removed the unnecessary Berserk reference.**


	3. Chapter 3

Mercury slowly moved into the amphitheater, making sure that none of the girls from before were following him. _That was close..._ He had knocked the faunus girl's shoe out of her hand, thinking that no one had seen it, but when that redhead in the grey and green dress showed up while staring right at him he knew he had to move. It was too early to be making enemies. He didn't even know what weapons any of them used.

 _That was a stupid thing to do on the first day._ Mercury wasn't concerned about being expelled from Beacon. Although there was such a rule in place for every other school he had ever gone to, it seemed there was no heavy punishment for bullying here. ... Not that Mercury was a bully, of course. Probably to make sure that the students would be prepared for the fact that Hunters weren't welcome everywhere, even places that they were needed. No, he was much more worried about making enemies before he got the chance to study them more.

Studying was important. Both in school and in life. If there was only one useful thing that his dad had ever taught him, it was that. You had to know how to do math on the fly. You had to be able to read fast enough to read an entire document and set it down in the same spot in less than a minute. You had to know what everyone in a room was capable of before you even stepped into it. All of these things were an important part of being an assassin, like his dad.

Mercury felt... complicated thinking about his dad. Especially now that he would never see him again. And that was his fault. But it wasn't a bad feeling knowing that he had been the one to do the deed. Or... was it...? He had plenty of bad memories about his father. Even now he could still smell the stench of alcohol. It hadn't left in over a month's time. But even now Mercury was still keeping his father's advice close to heart. Complicated didn't even begin to cover it.

Mercury gritted his teeth. Was that really the reason that he had tripped the girl earlier? Why he had been planning to bully- mess with- the girls around him? Because he was in a bad mood over killing his old man and needed to take his mind off of it? What a joke. Because of an impulsive, stupid decision like that, he easily could have made an enemy before he even knew what they were capable of. This was a school of Hunters and Huntresses. Even the weakest still had to be good enough to make the cut. They all had weapons, tricks that he didn't know about. What if he had tripped someone actually dangerous, instead of the squeaky-voiced cat faunus he had-

"Hey, do you know-"

Mercury panicked and immediately threw a punch at the origin of the voice. It collided with the face of a blonde boy a few inches taller than him, who dropped like a rock. _Well. Damn. "Don't get impulsive", eh, Dad? I guess we'll see if my luck holds out today._ Mercury paused and waited for the boy's response before choosing his next line. Hopefully this wouldn't end in a fight. He looked around. A few students had seen Mercury punch him, but none of them looked all that concerned.

"Ow..." The blonde sat up, holding his nose while looking up at Mercury. _It's a good thing for him I'm still getting used to these new legs. If I'd thrown a kick like I normally do, that probably would have broken his face, Aura or not._ "Sorry about that," the boy said as he stood up. "I probably should have said something _before_ was right behind you..."

An... apology? That wasn't what Mercury had expected. _Weird._ "Whatever. You're forgiven. I didn't punch you too hard, did I?"

"It kind of hurts, but, I think I'll be okay." The blonde pulled his hands away from his nose. _Oof. How weak is this guy's Aura?_ His nose was already bruising up. It didn't look great, to say the least. "How does it look?"

"..." Would honesty be the best thing approach here? Should he try and change the subject? Maybe he should try and turn it into a good thing. Mercury was upset with himself. If he had done _any_ studying on this guy before he had punched him, he would have known the right way to go about this. "... I've definitely seen worse." _DAMN IT._ _Who would accept an answer like that?! What kind of simpleminded-_

"Oh, so it's not too bad? Oh, good. Did it leave a cool scar or anything?"

 _... idiot do I think I'm dealing with? ... Really? This is one of the people that I was worrying about getting angry not even a few minutes ago? Whatever. Time to change the subject. It's pretty obvious that he's an idiot, so I should be able to get out of this hot water pretty easily._ "Right, you were saying something before I hit you?" If the boy really was an idiot like Mercury thought, then he would miss the reminder at the end of the sentence and just focus on answering.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Do you know where we're supposed to go now? It's my first day here, so I don't know."

"..." Mercury was stunned by the response. This idiot was an even bigger idiot than he had first thought. Not only was he asking someone who was also on their first day, but he was also standing in the amphitheater, where all of the other students had gathered along with the two of them. _This... this is a student that was accepted into Beacon Academy? He can't take a punch, he's an absolute idiot..._ Mercury's eyes glanced down. _... And his weapon's a sword?! How low are the requirements to get into this place?!_ "You're... you're standing where you need to go. Ozpin's going to be here in a few minutes to give a welcoming speech," The exasperated Mercury managed to respond.

"Oh. Good thing I was following you, then!" The blonde's face lit up with relief. "I don't know what I would have done if you weren't here!" _I don't know, maybe you would have followed ANYONE ELSE TO THE SAME PLACE?!_ He held out hand. "I'm Jaune. Jaune Arc."

... _Oh no._ Mercury knew where this was going. He had seen enough garbage buddy cop movies to know that he was going to be stuck dealing with this kid until they both graduated.

Mercury's bad mood was coming back.

* * *

"Are you sure this is the way that we're supposed to be going, Penny?" Ruby and Penny were going really far from where their search began. There weren't any other students around. At this point, they were pretty much just wandering around an abandoned school.

"Don't worry, Ruby, my friend!" Penny proudly responded. _She sure is enthusiastic, I'll give her that._ "We'll find her, give her her skate back and then we'll ALL be friends! I won't rest until the three of us are friends!" _And optimistic._

"I think it's a bit early to be talking about being friends." After all, the last time the two saw each other, the cat girl had screamed at Ruby to leave her alone. Was she really doing the right thing by trying to find her after she said that? "Penny, maybe we should head back, I think we're going to miss the opening ceremony..." At the very least, Ozpin told Ruby about that. Not where it was, of course, but he did tell her there _would_ be an opening ceremony.

"But if we miss it, then _she'll_ miss it, too! So let's find her and bring her back! And then we can all be friends!"

There really was no reasoning with Penny, it seemed. When she had her mind set on something, she didn't back down. Would Ruby really be okay like this? She really was just getting dragged around by the wrist by her new friend, to try and find someone that she wasn't sure she wanted to find. "You seem really sure that she'll be our friend after this."

"Helping each other out is what friends do, Ruby! If we help her out, then it's _guaranteed_ that she'll be our friend!"

 _Guaranteed_ _? That's not how... friends... work..._ "... Hey, Penny? Do you have any other friends, besides me?"

"No, but I would like to have some more friends!" _Ah... that explains it._ Ruby had had a feeling from how their first meeting had gone that Penny was the kind of person who didn't have many friends. And while it was kind of cute that she wanted more, it was also a little creepy.

Maybe Ruby wouldn't feel it was creepy if it weren't for the fact that she _was_ being dragged along on Penny's journey to make a new friend. Maybe.

* * *

Neon looked at her one remaining skate. How was she supposed to skate with only one skate on? How was she supposed to _fight_ with only one skate on? Her entire fighting style was based around combining her Semblance with her skates! She couldn't just buy new ones from a store, either, her skates had been specially designed to make her go really fast, even through grass and sand and stuff! And now one of them was gone!

Literally the worst day ever. The only thing that could possibly make the day worse would be-

"Salutations!"

 _... That voice..._

 _..._

 _..._

 _...NO..._

Neon slowly turned her head. She had heard this voice from before! This voice was the one that started it all! This voice belonged to the other girl who had stolen everyone's attention on the airship! She was one of the ones who had ruined today for her! She was one of the ones who had made her lose her skates! She was... STANDING WAY TOO CLOSE TO NEON'S FACE! "AH!" Neon jumped back to try and put some distance between the two of them. "You again?!"

"Salutations!" The girl repeated, with a giant smile on her face. Behind her was-

"BOTH OF YOU?!" The other girl was here as well?! _Why?!_ "DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE?!"

"I- wait, please! I- I just think that we got off on the wrong foot!" The smaller girl who tried to talk to Neon earlier started. This was ridiculous! She couldn't get rid of these two! Was she going to lose her other skate too? "We're actually here to give you back your other shoe!"

"... Oh." Neon looked closer at the two of them, because she honestly hadn't been paying much attention to the way either of them looked. Force of habit: normally people that weren't her weren't worth much attention. And looking over the clothes that the two of them were wearing, that thought still held up, but- there it was! HER OTHER SKATE!

Neon leaped towards the duo with her arms outstretched for a Semblance-assisted glomp. Neon alone didn't carry enough force to convey her happiness; that was what her Semblance, which greatly boosted her speed, was for! All three girls fell to the ground with a rainbow trail behind them. "GAH!"

"Oh my gosh, thank you SO much! I was _SO_ worried that I'd never see these again! I'm so sorry that I was being a bit of a jerk right there, it happens you know, sometimes I get ANGRY and it's hard to think right and I've just been having a bad day and to be fair it's kind of your fault but I forgive you because you probably don't even know what you did wrong I've actually been in a bad mood since I woke up this morning I don't know if its just nerves or something but I'm not like that normally I just have this big plan that's _super_ important and sometimes I get all gloomy when I start planning things and-"

"Ah, it's nice to see friends getting along so well."

Neon looked up to see a familiar face. "Professor Ozpin?!" Both of the girls pinned underneath Neon looked over at the man watching them.

Ozpin took a sip out of the mug he always kept on him and gave a gentle smile. "Yes, when I saw Ruby heading this way, I couldn't help but follow her. She's quite interesting, isn't she, Penny?"

"Indeed!" The girl apparently named Penny, who had been holding Neon's skate, responded. _I guess that makes the other girl Ruby, then..._

"Um... Professor Ozpin, isn't there supposed to be an opening ceremony right now?" Ruby asked. _She really needs to work on her confidence. If I were to talk over her you wouldn't even hear her talk. I wonder if roller skating would help her out._

Another sip. "Well, to be honest, it was about to begin before I saw you in the distance, and I couldn't stop myself from following you."

"Is it _really_ okay for you to be over here?"

"It's fine, they can wait." Ozpin smiled.

* * *

"Where is he?" Roman asked through gritted teeth, clearly looking annoyed at the fact he was surrounded by teenagers in the amphitheater. Sun thought it was funny that Roman lost his composure just by being near other people.

Sun shrugged. "It's fine, we can wait." He looked over at his other new friend. "We can wait, right, Sage?"

Sage nodded.

"Yeah, we can wait. Not like we're in a hurry or anything."

* * *

"So, are you all enjoying your first day here?" Ozpin asked as the four of them walked the long walk back to the amphitheater. He couldn't help but wonder how much Glynda would yell at him for being late. Thoughts for later.

Penny was the first to chime in. "It's spectacular! I just got here and I've already made TWO new friends!"

"Is that so? I'm happy for you, Penny. It seems like we can already agree that bringing you here was the right decision." Ozpin paused. _Oops._ He wasn't supposed to have let that slip. That was supposed to be a secret.

"Wait," Ruby interrupted, "You brought Penny to Beacon, too? I thought that I was a special case..."

"Oh, of course you're a special case. I gave you a special invitation to the school. All three of you are special in that regard." Ozpin took a sip of his hot chocolate. _Perhaps them knowing the truth wouldn't hurt, as long as they didn't know the reasoning behind it._ "I suppose it just figures that you would end up being drawn to each other, with that in mind." Ozpin felt his mood drop as the words came out of his mouth. _Yes, indeed it_ would _figure that the three of them would be drawn together, wouldn't it?_

Ozpin wasn't a fan of lying, and yet he seemed to constantly be spouting half-truths and leaving out important information. Of course, this was because there was no way that he could tell anyone the full truth. A single word out of line, and everything could go wrong; what was supposed to be some innocent fun could easily turn into career-ending fiasco.

Ozpin decided to change the subject. No one was supposed to be in a bad mood before giving a speech. Maybe his students would manage to cheer him up. "And you, Neon? How are you-"

"You said this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance!" the small faunus girl yelled, her high pitched voice hurting Ozpin's ears. "I was supposed to be special! What gives?!"

 _Ah, that's right. Neon Katt is a narcissist. I guess letting that information out in front of_ her _wasn't a good idea. ... Then again, letting that information out in general was a pretty bad idea._ "Like I said back then, Neon, this _is_ a once-in-a-lifetime chance." _It just happens that I've been giving once-in-a-lifetime chances to_ a lot _of students this year._ Ozpin increased his pace. He shouldn't have followed Ruby, even out of curiosity. He had dug himself into a hole. Now he just needed to get back to the amphitheater, so he could give the opening speech. After that, back to his office to try to come up with excuses just in case the girls- or any of the students he had specifically brought to Beacon- figured out what was going on.

* * *

Beacon Academy. The birthplace of many of mankind's greatest Hunters and Huntresses. A shining "beacon" of hope for all in Vale.

But soon this place would be nothing more than a graveyard, and a bad memory for all who remained. That was Adam Taurus' intent.

To the students around him, he was just another up-and-coming Hunter, just like the rest of them. They had no idea who stood alongside them.

Adam Taurus was no ordinary Hunter. Without his mask, designed to look like a Grimm, no one could tell that he was one of the leaders of the infamous faunus organization, the White Fang.

Terrorists, that's how the group was branded by humans, but of course humans would view them as terrorists. Terrorist is what you call someone when they're taking your comfortable and peaceful life from you. Even if their comfortable and peaceful life demands the suffering of another race.

The White Fang had once tried to be a peaceful organization, but the humans treated it with the same level of seriousness that one might give to a toddler making demands. Violence was the only language the barbaric species understood.

Adam Taurus had been the one to make the leap forward, which was why he was now one of the leaders of the White Fang, along with his girlfriend who had been beside him every step of the way. And now Adam was going to take another great leap forward. Taking down Beacon Academy from the inside.

As Professor Ozpin finally walked onto the stage of the amphitheater, Adam smirked. How confident the human looked. The thought of the headmaster's body withering away into nothingness was a comforting one.

But that would have to wait for another day.

"Ahem..." the headmaster spoke up, silencing all of the students within the amphitheater. "I'll keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge. To hone your craft and acquire new skills."

 _That's more accurate than you realize, human..._ Although Adam had no real intent of being a Hunter, the training he would receive here would undoubtedly be of use in the future. Knowing how to fight was a necessity. It made it easier to kill the Creatures of Grimm. It made it easier to kill humans.

"And when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people."

 _Again, accurate, but not in the way you think, Professor._

"But I look amongst you and all I see is wasted energy in need of purpose, direction."

 _Heh. I have my purpose, Ozpin._ I _will be the one protecting_ my _people, not any of these lousy humans._

"You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far."

 _It's interesting to me that you should say that, professor. Because in a few months time, you're going to be the one learning that same lesson._

"It is up to you to take the first step."

 _He truly doesn't have any clue about us, does he?_

As the headmaster walked away from the microphone, Adam smirked again. No, Ozpin was oblivious to the four students who had infiltrated Ozpin's precious school; the four who would be responsible for the fall of Beacon. Glynda Goodwitch, Ozpin's aide, stepped up to the microphone.

"You will gather in the ballroom tonight. Tomorrow your initiation begins. Be ready. You are dismissed."

 _I don't_ need _to be ready. I'm more than enough to handle anything this school can throw at me._

As the students in the amphitheater dispersed, Adam made his way to his the other three who would be assisting in his plan.

The first was Blake Belladonna, standing beside the other two, reading a book. None of the other students, not even their two team mates, knew that the cat faunus was another leader of the White Fang, like himself. More than that, Blake was Adam's. They had been together since they were children, and the mere sight of her beautiful amber eyes and black hair put Adam at ease. Just thinking of her cool, collected voice made him capable of dealing with the two tagalongs. The bow atop her head made Adam a little sad, because it concealed her lovely cat ears, but it was there to make sure no one suspected her of being a faunus.

The second of his partners was a rabbit faunus. Velvet Something-or-another. Her name wasn't important. She and the last member of their group had been recruited by Blake on the same night. She was a nervous wreck, visibly uncomfortable, and it almost made Adam sick that she would be one of the four people tearing apart Beacon from the inside. She had not been recruited due to her hatred of humans, but rather due to her weapon. Although Adam had only seen it once, he knew how dangerous such a weapon could be. When all of the pieces fell into place, that weapon would be able to tear through humans in seconds.

And finally, the last of their partners, Cardin Winchester. A human. A horribly bigoted human, who made his distaste of faunus well known. How Blake had convinced him to work with them was beyond Adam's knowledge and care. As much as Adam wanted to kill the boy, he was an integral part of their plan to make Beacon fall. He was probably the most important part, actually. Despite his arrogant and standoffish nature, he at least knew to listen when Adam spoke and to not question him. _The ideal human._

"Tomorrow. Don't make any mistakes." Adam ordered as he walked past the group.

"I won't," Cardin said with a smirk as he walked off to go talk to some human students.

"Right, o-okay," Velvet stuttered as she walked away.

Blake turned and walked beside Adam. "Any potential threats?" Adam asked, looking down at the girl beside him.

"Hard to say. Nothing you and I can't take, but the other two..."

"Right." He kissed Blake. Such a public display of affection was likely not welcome by the school or by Blake, but it served its purpose. Letting every man here know that Blake was Adam's property. No one would take her from him. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Adam walked away with a smile on his face, an unusual and unnerving expression to everyone who saw him. Blake's lips had that effect on him.

* * *

 _It's like a big slumber party._ The ballroom had about forty students in it. The number seemed... a little small, when put into words like that. Ruby thought about it. Was that really all the first year students at Beacon? Forty? She thought back to her time at Signal Academy. How many students were in her class back then...? It was a little over... twenty? That times two because her year was split into two classes, and...

Yeah, forty. But surely there were more students than just one year of students from Signal? Ruby knew that other schools, not just Signal, sent their best students to Beacon, so there _should_ logically be more students than just one year from Signal. Was it actually really hard to get into Beacon? How much had Ruby lucked out by being in _From Dust til Dawn_ on that night?

She looked over at her two new friends, Neon Katt and Penny Polendina. Penny was enthusiastically brushing Neon's hair while Neon was bragging about how great she was. It was pretty amazing how fast Neon had warmed up to the two of them, just this morning she was yelling at them both. Penny was just _really_ happy about having friends. They were both pretty eccentric in their own rights, but if what Penny, Neon, and Ozpin had said was true, and if Ruby's suspicions about how the school worked were true, then both of them had been personally accepted into Beacon, just like Ruby. Which meant that they were both as good as Ruby, if not better.

That made Ruby a little nervous. She hadn't seen either of their weapons yet, so Ruby couldn't help but wonder if her skill level matched up to theirs? What if she wasn't as good as them, even with Crescent Rose? She knew she was practically helpless without her scythe in a fight; what if they could fight without their weapons? What if Crescent Rose wasn't enough to get her through-

"Now now, turn that frown upside down, Red."

Who-? A teacher? The man standing above Ruby was definitely too old to be a student here.

"Um..." Ruby looked to her friends for help, but they were caught up in their own little world. "Can I help you?"

"Nope." The man popped a smile at her before sitting down next to her. "Just felt like saying hello. It's the neighborly thing to do, after all." Ruby wasn't very good at picking up sarcasm, so she wasn't sure what to make of that statement.

 _Should I be worried?_ She looked into the man's eyes. Or, his eye. His left eye. His right eye was covered by his orange hair. Green eyes. Was he wearing eyeliner?

"Torchwick."

"Um... Ruby."

"Ruby, huh?" He sat on the name for a second before realization hit him. "Ah, sorry, I guess I'm more used to introducing myself with my last name. Adults, right? I'm Roman."

"Oh, um... I'm still Ruby. Ruby Rose. Nice to meet you." Ruby thought about what Roman was saying. "Wait, why did you tell me your first name? Aren't you a teacher?"

"A teach- no, I'm a student, like you." Roman chuckled as surprise came onto Ruby's face. _He's a student? He's, like, an adult!_ Roman puffed his chest out, and proudly added, "I'm actually here because I was invited by the headmaster himself."

"You too?" Just like that, Ruby met someone else who Ozpin had personally invited?!

"Wh- What do you mean, 'you too'?" Roman looked shocked by the statement. "Don't tell me that you got invited too?!"

"Yes!" Penny chimed in, startling both Ruby and Roman. "As a matter of fact, all three of us were invited here!"

"All three of you?" Roman looked behind Penny to see Neon, who looked back at him, amused.

"Aren't you a little too _old_ to be a student here?" Neon asked with a smirk on her face. "Like, I can see your wrinkles and everything."

Roman turned back to Ruby without acknowledging Neon's question, annoying her. "So that makes _six_ whole people who've been personally invited here by Ozpin?"

 _Six people? What?_ "What do you mean, six?"

"I met two kids who also got invited here. What's going on?" Roman looked back in the direction he came from, at two boys roughhousing on the other side of the ballroom, presumably the "kids" that he was talking about. "I thought my situation was special. What's he up to?"

Roman's words parroted Ruby and Neon's thoughts. Meanwhile, Penny was just happy that she was about to make a new friend.

* * *

 _Six others, seven including myself._ Mercury laid back on his sleeping bag. He had been watching the conversation between the adult and the girls from earlier today largely out of concern that the man was a pedophile, but apparently he was just in the same boat that Mercury was in.

 _Weird. I figured my case was special. I wonder if that's actually the normal way to get in here?_ Mercury looked over at the blonde boy laying next to him. He just couldn't shake Jaune, no matter how hard he tried. "Hey, how did you get into this school?"

Jaune flinched at the question. "S-same way as everyone else, you know," he stuttered while avoiding eye contact.

 _That was a weird reaction._ What, was Jaune lying about something? And really, how did "everyone else" get into this school; finding that out was the reason Mercury bothered talking to Jaune in the first place.

 _I've got to ditch this kid, first chance I get._

* * *

 **Right, this chapter's where things are starting to splinter off from the original story line. Nothing extreme yet, you know, just want to make sure that everyone's introduced and no one's missing yet. After the initiation's when things'll start to get a bit derailed, and that's in three chapters, so I'll have plenty of time to figure out where the plot's gonna go from there.**

 **I totally didn't forget to introduce Jaune while writing the previous chapters. Nope. That's crazy talk. He's one of the titular characters, how could I forget about him? It would be like the writers of RWBY constantly forgetting that Nora's the strongest member of team JNPR. Things like that don't happen.**

 **I'm considering changing the genres again, because this is turning into more of a retelling of RWBY than the parody I originally planned. Maybe Adventure instead of Humor? I don't know.**

 **In any event, I'd still appreciate a review or two, you know, let me know what you think of the story: what you think I'm doing right, what you think I'm doing WRONG.**

 **See you next time.**


	4. Chapter 4

Initiation. Today's the day... Jaune stared at his reflection in the mirror. He felt nervous. How couldn't he? How could he avoid being nervous in this situation? Today was the day that his skills were finally going to be put to the test.

...

... His skills...

...

... There wasn't anything to worry about. With his great-great-grandfather's weapon, Creocea Mors, by his side, he couldn't lose. As long as he believed in himself, Jaune could do anything.

...

Jaune looked over at the grey-haired boy brushing his teeth next to him, "... Hey, Merc?"

"That's not my name."

"I'm feeling kind of nervous. How do you deal with nerves?"

Mercury spat out his toothpaste before answering. "I don't get nervous over stuff like this. I can handle this." Mercury looked Jaune in the eyes and sighed before continuing, "If you're really going to have a nervous breakdown on day one then you probably don't belong here."

Jaune didn't miss the words at the end of Mercury's sentence. _You probably don't belong here_. No, there was no doubt about it now. Ever since last night when Mercury asked Jaune how he got into Beacon, Jaune had had a feeling, but now he was sure. Mercury knew about Jaune's secret. How did this happen? How did Mercury figure it out? _Am I really that transparent?_

"Don't tell anyone, please." Jaune didn't want his time at Beacon to end before it even began.

Mercury just went back to brushing his teeth. "Don't worry, I won't."

 _He- he's not going to tell anyone about that? He's going to keep quiet even though he knows?_ Jaune couldn't help but smile as he put away his toothbrush. He wasn't really sure what to think of Mercury before now because Mercury didn't talk to him that much, but now it was obvious. Mercury was the kind of person who kept your secrets safe. The best kind of friend. "Thanks, Merc," Jaune said before leaving the bathroom to try and find his equipment. Despite everything, Mercury still believed in him enough to give him a shot. He couldn't let his new friend down.

"Still not my name."

 _I really hope we end up on the same team._

* * *

 _"Don't tell anyone?" Don't tell anyone what; that Jaune's getting nervous on his first day? Who cares?_

Mercury turned his attention away from the blonde who he had been straddled with, to the future. He knew that teams would be selected at some point in the near future. But when? Before the initiation? After? How much influence did Mercury have in who would be on his team? What could he do to ensure that he didn't end up on Jaune's team? Could he do anything to make sure that he was on a different team than Jaune's?

Would they be assigned teams based on personal skill levels? Mercury was confident that his fighting style put him a few leagues above Jaune and his sword in terms of skill. No, probably not, that would mean that all the worst Hunters-in-training would be on the same team, meaning that none of them got any better. They would probably make the worst students pair together with the best students if that was the case, condemning Mercury to his fate.

What if the teams were assigned based on how much the students had interacted with each other? Mercury bit down on his toothbrush in frustration. If that were the case, then Mercury was definitely going to end up on the same team as Jaune: the two of them barely interacted with anyone but each other in the past day.

 _I really don't want to be stuck with him on my team. If that happens, I'm going to drop out. Literally: anyone but him, Mercury resolved before spitting out his toothpaste for the last time._

* * *

As Neon's fourth ponytail was finally done up, she looked at herself in the mirror. A light blue tank top (always a good color) with a purple bra (also a good color) clearly visible underneath; pink skirt (GREAT color) with her favorite white belt (EVEN BETTER COLOR) on as well; her SUPER-cute white collar on; and all of her skating gear, conveniently colored white. Her tattoos also looked really cool, the heart right below her eye was still a bit painful to think about, but at least she hadn't tried to get the rainbow star that covered her right upper arm on her face instead. Her hair, which she had just spent just about _forever_ getting ready, was also looking GREAT. The largest two of her orange ponytails were being shown off to the world, as if to say: "Look at me, I'm Neon Katt, and I'm the most important person in the room!" Because if Neon's ponytails could talk, that's what they should be saying. Her aqua highlights that stood in her bangs looked great, as well.

All in all, Neon was looking AMAZING.

That said, Neon couldn't say the same about her two new friends.

Ruby Rose was wearing a weird-looking dress thing that looked like she pulled it out of a fairy tale. _Black and red: ew. Maybe I'd think it looked cool if I was like, twelve._ No tattoos, either, from what Neon could tell. _Black and red boots: more like black and red: no thanks._ Her hair was black, but it looked like it was dyed red at the ends. _WOW she is obsessed with black and red._

Ruby Rose has a nasty case of trying too hard to look cool, Neon concluded, before looking at her other, much more clingy, new friend.

Penny Polendina was wearing a grey and lime green overall skirt (ew) over a white blouse. She also wore a pink bow on her head and had black and green stockings on that covered up black boots. Penny also had a REALLY weird looking black and green thing around her neck that matched her stockings. Neon couldn't tell if Penny had any tattoos. Maybe the weird thing was covering a really cool one? Probably not, Penny didn't seem cool enough to have a tattoo, let alone a cool one. Neon was both satisfied and disappointed seeing Penny's hair was a plain orange. It broke up her color scheme a bit but a few highlights here and there wouldn't kill her.

On the other hand: Penny's not trying hard enough to look cool.

Both of these girls needed Neon's help, and Huntresses were supposed to help people, _But maybe I should wait and see if we end up on the same team first. If I accidentally help them out too much and they end up outshining me, that'll be bad for me and MY goals._

Neon turned to look at Ruby. She had a great big grin on her face while she was cradling a big red block. "You sure look happy!"

Ruby's smile grew even bigger. "Yep. No more awkward small talk and 'getting to know you' stuff." Ruby started petting her big red block. _Weird_. "Today I get to let my sweetheart do the talking." She held it up to her face and made a weird purring noise. Was that what Ruby's problem was? She didn't want to talk to anyone? Didn't want to hang out with Neon? _WOW. What a jerk_.

"Cool!" Neon lied about what she thought of the situation. "What's that thing?" It was probably her weapon, but what kind of a weapon was a big red block?

Suddenly, Ruby's big red block loudly unfolded, startling both Neon and Penny, almost causing Neon to fall over. It was a very good thing Neon wasn't wearing her skates yet. It wasn't a big red block at all! It was a big… red…

"It's a scythe!" Penny announced.

"It's also a customizable, high impact, sniper rifle."

"What?" Neon didn't know how to react.

"It's also a gun." Ruby proudly announced, the smile on her face bigger and more confident than ever.

THAT THING was Ruby's weapon? It looked… big. And scary. And it could probably do a lot more in a fight than Neon's glow stick nunchucks. "..." Noise came out of Neon's mouth, but it wasn't words…

"That looks magnificent, Ruby, my friend!" Penny declared as she leaned in to touch Ruby's scythe. Ruby still backed away. _I see I'm not the only one who thinks she's too clingy._

"So… what do you got?" Ruby asked while she made her scythe go back to its original big red block form. _How am I going to follow up that?! THAT THING'S A MONSTER!_

Penny stood up, and suddenly a bunch of SWORDS came flying out of her back. Neon couldn't resist falling in surprise this time. How could she resist? _SWORDS?! WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?!_

The swords flew around a little bit before coming to rest around Penny's head. "These swords are my weapons!" Penny put her hands on her hips and let her swords dance around a little bit before announcing, "I'm combat ready!"

"Woah..." Ruby responded, leaning in to touch the swords herself. In contrast to Ruby's response to the same situation, Penny leaned in closer to let Ruby get a better look. Neon, on the other hand, had no way to respond. _I… I underestimated these two… I thought I'd have to teach them stuff for them to outshine me but they've already got me beat. It's only initiation day today…_

"What about you, Neon, my friend?" Penny asked as her swords disappeared back to wherever they came from. Now Ruby and Penny's eyes were on her.

"Um..." She grabbed her glowstick nunchucks. To think just a few minutes ago she had been so proud of them. "I've got these." It felt weird not hearing any happiness in her own voice. "They're nunchucks filled with dust. I can crack them to make them do a bunch of stuff." Wow. This must be how it felt to be people that weren't Neon. It felt like she was disappointing.

"Woah..." Ruby still insisted on getting really close to Neon's weapon. _How could she be impressed by these? She has a giant SCYTHE GUN!_

"What kind of 'stuff'?" Penny asked as her face closed in to the nunchucks, awe in her voice. _How can SHE be impressed by these?! She has SWORDS! MAGIC FLYING SWORDS!_

"Um… I can make stuff freeze solid, or explode, or shock things by hitting them with this." Neon suddenly felt really out of it. She wanted to go home. Nunchucks weren't as cool as scythe guns or magic flying swords, and she knew it. Back in Atlas, everyone thought her weapon was amazing because of how unique it was, but nothing was more unique than MAGIC FLYING SWORDS and SCYTHE GUNS.

But then, Neon perked up. A brilliant idea formed in her mind. _With these two next to me, we can easily become the coolest team at Beacon. And then, the world!_ It was obvious! They weren't cool enough on their own, so they needed her help, and with their weapons combined with her own, they would be the toughest Huntress team in Beacon! IN THE WORLD!

"Alright, girls." Neon wrapped her arms around Ruby and Penny, discomforting the first and delighting the second, "Do either of you know how to skate?"

 _I'm ready for this._

* * *

An announcement came up over the overhead speakers: "Would all first year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation?" That was Ozpin's assistant, or whatever she was supposed to be. "Again, all first year students to Beacon Cliff for initiation."

Sun looked over at his posse. Sage and Roman looked back at him. "Alright, let's go, guys, follow me!"

Roman scoffed. "Right, right, whatever you say, kid."

Sun was pretty satisfied with how he and Roman were getting along. It was good hanging out with people with similar hobbies. He held his catch up. "Check it out, new watch!"

"Oh-ho!" Roman seemed genuinely impressed. Obviously he was impressed, it was a pretty expensive watch. "Looking good, banana boy! Always count on a Faunus to find the most expensive thing in the room." Roman looked around, making sure that his mark wasn't around to see, before pulling out a wallet. "New wallet. Found it on the ground somewhere."

 _Ah. That's not good._ "Hey, man, you probably shouldn't take-"

"Ah, ah, ah. _Found_ it. Same as how you _found_ that watch of yours, banana boy." Roman opened the wallet up and took the lien out of it before throwing the wallet away. He gave Sun a smug look.

Sun didn't feel great about taking money from people. That was a line that he didn't like to cross. People needed that to like, live, and stuff. Food and valuables, that was okay, but money's too far.

But it was pretty obvious that Roman didn't have the same values as Sun. Maybe it'd be fine: after all, stealing people's stuff was pretty much the same as taking their money. They just spent their money on dumb stuff that didn't matter all that much. Like watches. And shirts.

And food.

… Whatever, it didn't really matter anyways. If they needed it so bad they wouldn't have left it out in the open for other people to take.

"How about you, Sage, you find anything good?" Sun asked, turning to look at his other new friend.

"I can't believe you two..." Sage growled. _Woah_. _He looks pissed._ "You shouldn't steal-"

" _Find_!"

"- other people's stuff. What's wrong with you?" _Uh oh. I don't really know Sage that great. Maybe we should have made sure he was cool with this stuff before we did our little show and tell._

"Relax, Sage." Roman said as he put himself between Sun and Sage. "We're just having a bit of harmless, good, old-fashioned fun. We're going to give it all back by the end of today."

"We are?" An elbow to the ribs. "Ah, yeah, that's right, we are!"

Sage gave Roman a death glare. _Sheesh, if looks could kill._ "You threw their wallet on the ground."

"So they could find it easier!"

" _After_ taking their lien."

"Ah… I..." Roman shrugged. "Alright, you got me." He threw the lien he acquired on the ground as well, then held his hands up in mock-innocence. "See, that's everything."

"Their wallet's back there."

"You're not really going to make me-"

Another death glare.

"... Fine." Roman picked the lien back up and ran back to where he had throw the wallet. He was back in just a couple of seconds. "There. Took the wallet with me this time."

"That wasn't the prob-"

"So where is Beacon Cliff, exactly?" Sun interrupted to save his new racist kleptomaniac friend.

"Don't try and change the sub-"

"Don't worry, Sage, I'll return it right after initiation," Roman lied.

"You think I'm going to-"

"Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask, Roman, what kind of weapon do you have?" Sun changed the subject.

"You can't just-"

"I've got this baby here!" Roman played along as he held up his cane, which Sun had barely noticed up to this point. "Fashionable and deadly, just like its owner."

"Ah, you mean its _original_ owner, 'cause you sure aren't talking about yourself, Bowler Hat."

"Oh ho! The monkey's got jokes!"

* * *

As Blake stood on the precipice of Beacon Cliff, she reflected on how the day had been going up to this point. She woke up to the sound of arguing. Someone stole Adam's wallet. Someone had stolen Cardin's watch. She had had to listen to both of them whine about their loss and point accusatory fingers at the other. Blake had expected better out of Adam. She had expected it out of Cardin, but it was still giving her a headache just thinking about it.

Whatever. There wasn't any use thinking about their failures. This was the part that she had been training for anyways. Initiation. Once she was an official student of the school their plan could well and truly begin. This was just an easy first step in a intricate and fragile plan.

There weren't a lot of ways that the initiation could go wrong, but that wasn't the problem. Her team would ultimately be the biggest problem with taking on Beacon.

Adam was far too confident in his abilities. His original plan was just to storm Beacon with the full force of the White Fang and kill Ozpin then and there. Blake adored her boyfriend, but he had a tendency to be a bit bull-headed. … No pun intended. None of them knew what Ozpin was capable of. If Adam attacked Ozpin and lost, then that would be it. The White Fang would collapse without him. Blake would collapse without him. Adam's biggest fault was that he didn't know how important he was to everything and everyone around him. Which was a big part of why Blake was always by his side; she knew how important he was even if he didn't.

The other problems lied with the two students that had been intimidated into joining them. Cardin Winchester and Velvet Scarlatina. They were already going to become students at Beacon, so it made sense to recruit them at the time. But Cardin had been defiant of them even as his family was being threatened. It took a display of overwhelming force to convince him to go along with the plan. But what if he changed his mind? What if he betrayed them? In retrospect, it may have been a better choice to kill him then and there, or just leave him oblivious to their presence altogether. Velvet was no better. She was a coward in every aspect of the word, who had set aside her own morals for the sake of her family, but she was a skilled fighter. So was Cardin, really. Which was why both of them were coming. A decision on Adam's part, to recruit skilled students to assist with the plan: one faunus, and one human for… reasons that escaped Blake's understanding.

Why did they need Cardin? Adam had no affinity for humans, and his decision to recruit a known bigot instead of someone more tolerant of Faunus was even more confounding. The ear pulling and name calling that Cardin was fond of was something that Adam hated seeing in humans, so why had he been the one to be recruited?

Despite being his girlfriend, Blake still didn't understand Adam that well.

"For years you have trained to become skilled warriors."

Oh? Apparently Ozpin had finally decided to begin the initiation. But what would they have to do?

"And today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest."

* * *

Glynda Goodwitch, Ozpin's aide, spoke up, "Now, I'm sure many of you have heard rumors about the assignment of teams. Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be given teammates. Today."

"These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon. So it is in your best interest to be paired with someone with whom you can work well. That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

Mercury audibly sighed a sigh of relief. That made things much easier for him. He just had to launch himself as far as he could from Jaune in order to make sure that they wouldn't end up as partners. With his new legs, that would be much easier. _I'll have to thank Ozpin for these later._

* * *

"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the Emerald Forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die."

Sage smirked. Finally, something to be excited about. Fighting. He looked around for the reactions of the students around him. A few students looked worried, some looked excited. Sun and Roman were in the latter category. Sage didn't want to look at them right now. One last student caught Sage's eye. A boy with grey hair, who was getting ready to jump. _Jump?_

An even bigger grin appeared on Sage's face. _Obviously. All the good students will launch themselves even further than everyone else. I like the way this guy thinks._ Sage got ready to activate his Semblance.

* * *

"You will be monitored and graded for the duration of your initiation. But our instructors will not intervene. You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path containing several relics. Each pair must choose one, and return to the top of the cliff. We will regard that item, as well as your standing, and grade you appropriately." All of this was making Jaune very nervous. This was… more than he was expecting. "Are there any questions?"

Jaune raised his hand before asking, "Yeah, um, sir-"

"Good. Now, take your positions."

As everyone down the line of students stood in their ready positions, Jaune got even more nervous than ever. Why did no one else look worried about this? "Uh, sir? I've got a, um, question." He heard a strange noise coming from the direction of the other students. "So, this landing strategy thing, uh, what is it? You're, like, dropping us off or something?" That noise was getting closer. A rainbow suddenly launched itself into the air. _What?_

Ozpin gave him a weird look as the noise got closer. A green light went flying through the air now. "No. You will be falling."

 _Falling? So, does that mean that everyone else-_ "Oh, I see. So, like, did you hand out parachutes for us?" The sound of a gun going off interrupted the noise approaching Jaune.

"No, you will be using your own landing strategy."

"Uh huh. Yeah." _But how am I supposed to be able to survive a fall like this? Maybe the 'landing strategy' has something to do with it._ There was a very loud grunt, like something launching itself, as the sound came even closer to Jaune. He looked to his left. All the other students were gone now. Where did they go? "So, what exactly is a landing strate-" the ground was suddenly gone. Jaune was now flying. "-GGGGGYYYYYYYYYYY?!"

* * *

Ozpin turned to look back at the students now flying through the air. He silently took a sip of his hot chocolate and smiled, content with how things had turned out.

* * *

 **So, this chapter was a pain to write. My computer decided to update twice while writing this, erasing everything without letting me save. So, this chapter came out later than it was planned. My bad.**

 **Also, I didn't realize it before now, but did you realize that most of this world's team RWBY are either bad guys or a bit morally grey in the main show? Like, out of all of them, Sage is the _only_ one who hasn't done anything illegal onscreen yet. As such, that's how I'm writing him from now on. As the only good guy on a team of thieves and sadists.**

 **Again, I would appreciate a review or two to let me know how I'm doing, what you think of the story, what you like, _what you didn't like, WHAT YOU FEEL I NEED TO REWRITE_ , you know, stuff like that.**

 **Seya.**


	5. Chapter 5

Ruby's eyes widened as a bird entered her aerial path. There was nothing that could be done about it, either she would slam into the poor thing or she would have to shoot it with Crescent Rose to clear her path. Or maybe she could use her Semblance to-

She felt herself slow down and heard a loud _squawk!_ "Birdie, no!"

So this is how initiation began? With the senseless and easily avoidable death of a poor, innocent, unknowing bird, killed by Ruby and her Aura? The life of a Huntress was a cruel one. Ruby closed her eyes as she drew Crescent Rose, knowing that she would have to go on. She couldn't let that poor bird's death go in vain. She would go on, with the bird in her heart, knowing that she would have to become a better Huntress, to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

Ruby fired a few shots at the treeline to clear the branches away so she could grab onto something with Crescent Rose, subconsciously ignoring the fact that firing into the treeline would probably end with her shooting a lot of birds.

As a suitable branch came into view, Ruby switched Crescent Rose from gun mode to scythe mode, and grabbed onto it. She let herself swing around the branch once so that she could slow down a bit before finally dismounting.

* * *

With the help of her Semblance, Neon rocketed through the air as a rainbow trailed behind her. She tried to make a cheerful holler, but her heart really wasn't in it as she fell towards the approaching trees and the ground below them. It was at times like these that Neon wished that she had some way of dealing with things other than hitting them with her nunchucks.

 _I wish I had magic flying swords._ Penny was probably going to have a much easier time landing with those things than Neon would with her weapon. _Or even a scythe gun_. Neon wondered how Ruby was able to use that thing. Unfolded, it was bigger than she was tall. _Maybe it's really light? Or maybe it's not? Maybe Ruby's really strong? Nah. She doesn't look very tough. I could probably beat her in an arm wrestling-_

Neon's train of thought was derailed as a branch smacked her in the face. _Oh, wow, the trees were way closer than I-_

Another branch. _Right, focus._ Neon reached for her nunchucks-

Another branch. _This should be easy, I just need to clear them out by swinging them a bit._ Neon grabbed her nunchucks-

Another branch. _Here we go..._ Neon raised her nunchucks-

 _Oh that's a VERY big branch._

At the last instant, Neon moved to grab the branch that very nearly took her head off instead of trying to break it with her nunchucks. She grabbed on, but slipped off. As she was supposed to, obviously. She looked forward for something else to continue her path. There! Another branch! She used her Semblance to change her trajectory, and swung off that branch as well. She might as well have been a monkey Faunus instead of a cat for all the swinging she'd be doing on the way down. At least there'd be ground on the ground. You can't skate on trees, after all.

* * *

As Mercury shot himself through the air further and further away from Beacon Cliff, he couldn't help but wonder if he had accidentally handicapped his ability to get a partner for his team. If he shot himself to the edge of the forest, there wouldn't be anyone around to team up with. Everyone else would have already paired up…

 _Including Jaune…_ It was worth the risk, Mercury concluded as he shot himself even further away. _I'll just find this temple thing and wait for someone without a partner to show up. Easy. I can even take the opportunity to finally study everyone: find out what their weapons are, who their partners are if I can't team up yet, or-_

There was a blur directly in front of him, and a loud impact from the forest below.

 _..._

… _W-was that a student?_ Mercury questioned as he tried to not panic over nearly being taken out of the air. _Grimm don't move that fast, so… probably?_ Mercury winced at the idea of a Nevermore grabbing him out of the air, before focusing on the thing that really mattered. _Th-that probably wasn't Jaune. I don't think that he can do that kind of stuff._

Mercury re-positioned himself so that his boots would launch him back towards the student in question. _A-alright, partner found. That was… that was close, that's what that was._

* * *

Roman positioned his cane in a way that would let him grab onto one of the oncoming branches with ease. Landing would be easy, that wasn't something Roman was all that excited about. He was, however, excited for the trip to the "abandoned temple". There was something weirdly charming about old buildings that no one lives in. He felt at ease in them.

He grabbed onto a branch and let centripetal force swing him around a few times, letting himself lose all his momentum from the fall. _So, team mates, huh?_ Roman considered all of the people he knew as he swung. There was Ruby, the girl from last night, and her friends. They had all been personally invited to Beacon, like he had, so they had to be good fighters. That was also true of the monkey and Sage.

Roman cringed at the thought of Sage. Who would have thought that that kid would be a goody-two-shoes? He certainly didn't look the part. Ending up on a team with him would be hell, he'd probably try and get Roman expelled just for being who he was.

Oh well, Roman had gotten a slick new wallet out of the situation. And to think he was just going to throw it away. Maybe Sage was good for something after all.

Roman pressed the button on the side of his cane's shaft, allowing the handle to come loose and letting him rappel safely down to the ground below. Upon touching down, he gave the cane's body a quick shake to try and free its handle from its place.

Luckily enough, it came free without any trouble. Roman didn't want to have to try and pull the whole tree down, but he would if that's what it took. Roman had lived long enough to know not to try and go without a weapon.

There was a noise behind Roman. He didn't even need to turn around to see what it was. He could tell already, from the smell of mangy unwashed teenage Faunus alone.

"Long time no see, Roman," Sun joked from above Roman. Obviously, he was hanging in a tree, that's where monkeys belong, after all.

"It's really been too long," Roman joked back. There was something reassuring about the fact that he would be on a team with a fellow criminal, even if the thief in question had _weird_ standards about what was okay to steal. A watch is fine but a wallet isn't? That's crazy talk!

* * *

Penny made impact with the ground. She hadn't taken any damage from the fall, due to her weapon cutting all the branches out of her path before she could even reach them.

Now that she had landed, she could focus on trying to find Neon or Ruby, or maybe even Roman, the man from last night. It would be nice if they were her teammates, it would be sad to have to end up on a different team even after they had all gotten along so well.

That said, it wouldn't hurt to try and make some new friends. She was exceeding expectations with her friend quota; she had wanted to make at least one by the time she had left Beacon, and on the first day alone she had made three: Ruby, Neon, and Roman. … She didn't actually know Roman that well. Maybe they could become even better friends later. All this in mind, it stood to reason that she could make at least one more friend on the second day.

Penny took a step forward before stopping. She heard a strange droning noise. What was it? … A boy… screaming… in fear… in the air… approximately 140 meters away… in the direction Penny had come from... estimated time of arrival with the treeline: ten seconds…

Penny examined all of what she knew of the situation. A boy that she didn't know was falling towards the trees, screaming in terror. How long would it take her to get to him? … It would take approximately 6 seconds, but doing that would exhaust her.

 _ETA nine seconds._

Penny didn't know whether or not it was worthwhile to try and intercept him. Why was the boy screaming in fear? Surely he didn't have too much to worry about? Even if worst came to worst, the boy's Aura would protect him from the ground. If she did try and reach him in time, she would probably be too exhausted to go through the initiation.

 _ETA eight seconds._

Penny gritted her teeth. Why was the falling boy screaming? Was it a fear of heights, or something more? What if he was actually in danger, and she was stuck here thinking about doing something when she could actually _be_ doing something about it? Wasn't that what Huntresses were supposed to do? Help people who are in danger?

 _ETA seven seconds._

Penny's weapon came out as she prepared to launch herself. There was no more time for thinking. There was only time for doing. As her weapon powered up, she thought about stopping, thought about what she had to lose by using this valuable energy.

 _ETA six seconds._

* * *

Jaune was screaming his lungs out. Was this how it was going to end? There was no way he would be able to survive this fall, even if the trees didn't kill him. How was he supposed to be able to survive this? What was the point of it all if he was just going to die here?

What _was_ the point of it all if he was just going to die here? If this initiation is the same for every year at Beacon, then that warning Ozpin gave was surely not just for show. Students died during this test. Was that all that Jaune's life was going to sum up to? Just one more student who died during initiation; just another number?

He thought of everyone who had believed in him up to this point. His parents, his sisters, even the staff at Beacon (although that last point was a little muddled), and even… Mercury, the boy he met just yesterday. If Jaune died here, then he would be letting all of them down.

So he couldn't die here. Not while he still had people who believed in him. He shut his mouth and grabbed Crocea Mors. Maybe, just maybe, his weapon would get him through this. After all, that's what this test was about, right? This was supposed to see if you were a good enough _Hunter_ to get into Beacon. Was Jaune good enough to be here?

He drew the sword half of his weapon. Maybe it would help him cut through the branches?

He deployed the sheath, turning it into a shield. Maybe it would… stop the branches from hitting him?

But then what? A shield wouldn't be enough to block the ground when he finally reached it. Maybe blocking the branches would slow him down enough that he wouldn't die instantly upon hitting the ground?

…

… This wasn't as good of a plan as Jaune had initially hoped, but it was this or nothing. He raised his shield. A deafening roar approached, perhaps the ground approaching, and finally-

 _CLANG!_

The sound of metal hitting metal rang out as a girl slammed face first into Jaune's shield at lightning speed, the impact stopping them both. Jaune's shield smashed itself into his chest, and he felt something crack. He probably should have been worried about that, but at the moment he was a little more worried about the girl who had stopped him. She had came out of nowhere in the blink of an eye while he was falling to his death and-

 _Oh, wait, falling._ The brief moment of stillness had almost made him forget the fact that he was still about three stories in the air and still going to fall to his death. _Ah, so close, but so far._ As gravity took back its grip on Jaune, he twisted to look at the ground-

Or, rather, he _tried_ to twist, as his "savior" had her arms wrapped around him, stopping him from moving entirely. As they both fell, Jaune tried to get a better look at the girl, but all he could see was a big pink bow over the top of his shield. _So, this is how it ends? I don't even get to see the person who tried to save me?_ He closed his eyes in resignation, and accepted his fate.

… The three story fall to his fate was taking a _very_ long time. Maybe this was that life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing that was in all kinds of books. But why wasn't his life flashing before his eyes? Was it because his eyes were closed? Did that screw it up? Do your eyes have to be open for your life to flash before them? Surely not, the memories of your life are in your mind, not your eyes. But you did _see_ the things in your memories with your eyes, so maybe that had to do with-

 _Alright, this fall's been going on long enough, something's up._ Jaune opened his eyes. He was on the ground, not falling. … No he wasn't on the ground, there was nothing below his feet. But he definitely wasn't falling anymore. There were trees in every direction. Did he actually manage to land safely? … Stupid question, he still wasn't on the ground, so he didn't land yet-

"Salutations!" a muffled voice came from below him. Jaune looked down. The girl was still there, with her arms wrapped around his shield and waist… and holding him about a foot off the ground.

"Um… hey." _She's… holding me up… This is a little awkward..._ "Did you just save me?"

"Indeed!" _She's still not letting go… This is weird..._

"Can you let go of me, please?" As though he had spoken a magic word, the girl's grip released and he dropped to his feet. "Thank you," Jaune said as he looked into the eyes of the girl who…

… _Wow, she's pretty cute._ The girl was a little shorter than him, with curly orange hair below the pink bow he had noticed earlier. Her eyes were bright green, but something seemed a little… weird... about them. Jaune couldn't place it. She was wearing a grey dress, and had a bunch of swords flying around her.

…

"Ah!" Jaune yelled as he jumped back away from her. _Flying swords?! Are we in danger?!_ Jaune raised his shield-

No, he didn't. In the heat of the moment, Jaune had forgotten about the crack he had heard before falling, and only now had come to the conclusion that that noise was his arm breaking. He immediately doubled over before dropping his shield, trying to get the weight off his arm.

"Are you okay?!" Jaune looked back up at the girl. She looked scared, confused. _Where did those swords go? That doesn't matter right now!_ _What matters is that you should never have a girl looking scared for you!_

 _Be confident. Girls love confidence, that's what Dad always said._ "I'm... I'm fine… Just… surprised, is all..." _Come on, look cool in front of the cute girl, you can do it!_

"... It appears as though you're injured." _Nooooo… She saw through my clever ruse…_ "Are you hurt?"

 _Quick, Jaune, think of something cool to say!_ "I'm not hurt, I'm... Jaune." … Jaune internally punched himself for using a "dad joke". Dad jokes aren't cool. They aren't cool at all.

The girl didn't respond. At all. Her face showed heavy thought. Far too much thinking considering what he had said. But then, realization appeared on her face, and she gave a happy laugh. "Ah, _you_ aren't hurt, _you_ are _Jaune!_ Quite humorous!" … _Okay, she took the bait. Great. Works for me._

"So, what's your name, Matchstick?" _Nickname! Alright, there we go! I'm confident enough to give her a nickname, she's gotta love that!_

The girl smiled, and responded, "I'm not Matchstick, I'm Penny!" She gave a self-satisfied laugh at her… "joke". It seemed like she didn't really get the point. Oh well. "It's a pleasure to meet you!"

Jaune force a chuckle to be polite, before carrying on, "Well, _Penny_ , it looks like we just made eye contact, so it looks like we're partners now." _Cool, cool, state the obvious coolly, that's what you do when you're confident._ "Looks like you're on Team Jaune now."

Penny gasped. "You already have a team?!"

"Uh… no, I..." _No, wait, stay cool Jaune! You can do this!_ "Yep, starting now, you're on Team Jaune." He put away Crocea Mors after awkwardly- _coolly_ fighting through the pain and grabbing his shield. "Now, we've got an abandoned temple to get to, so let's get going," Jaune said as he started walking in the general direction he thought that he should be going.

Penny smiled before announcing, "A sensational idea! Team Jaune, move out!" Penny giggled as she followed after him. _Alright, that's that. I managed to get her to stop worrying about me._

… Jaune thought back to what Ozpin had said on the cliff. There would be… "opposition" on the way. That probably meant that he was going to have to fight. Would he be able to fight with a broken arm? He could barely move his weapon back onto his hip as he was now, so…

…

 _I'll cross that bridge when I come to it._ Jaune looked over at Penny. Would she need his help? Would he even be able to help her? _She got into this school the right way, so she can probably hold her own. … But that's a bad way of thinking, I shouldn't just let a girl fight alone, on her own. That's not how I should do this…_

He would have to think of something, and fast. It wasn't like his arm was magically going to get better or anything.

* * *

Cardin Winchester looked around. Nothing but forest in every direction. He had been hoping that one of the other three of the "Let's Kill Ozpin Squad" had landed near him, so that he'd be able to become their partner quickly and easily. But no, he got launched before the rest, so he had no idea if the others had landed in front, behind, or anywhere near him.

So now he would have to try and avoid making eye contact with any other students. Sneaking around wasn't really a forte of his, so it was safe to say that this was largely going to be based on luck. Cardin hoped that he was going to be lucky; he definitely didn't want to get on Belladonna's bad side.

He wasn't all that scared of Adam, the "actual" leader of their group. He was just some dime-a-dozen loser who dressed in all black and red and said "scary" things all the time. The fact that he was a Faunus just reconfirmed what Cardin had already knew about him: not dangerous at all. Whatever. No, Blake Belladonna was the actual threat. Cardin shuddered just remembering the fight between himself and Blake. He couldn't even touch her. When he swung his weapon, she _exploded_. When he swung again, he got smashed to the ground. She didn't even need to lay a finger on him to take him down. The fight only got worse when she started actually using her weapon. If it hadn't been for the fact that they apparently wanted him alive, he probably wouldn't be here right now: he'd be dead a month before he even stepped into Beacon.

Still, that whole situation was _bullshit_ in general. The White Fang was going to kill his family if he didn't comply? What the hell? What had he done to deserve that? What had he done to deserve getting singled out for Adam's little hit squad? He was just supposed to go along with a plan he didn't want a part of, just like that?

So, in short, Cardin didn't want to end up as the partner for Adam or Blake. He'd do it if he needed to, but he didn't want to work with the people that put him into this situation. That just left the Faunus loser. Velvet or something like that. She was the worst. No backbone whatsoever. When she heard Blake threaten her family, she crumpled like a piece of paper. She didn't even _try_ to fight back. What a coward.

... He didn't want to be on a team with any of them: a loser, a coward, and the _bitch_ who came into his life and ruined everything. But no, it was all part of Adam's "master plan". Cardin _had_ to be on their team. He didn't know _why,_ exactly, considering that the White Fang probably had at least _one_ decent fighter in it- diamond in the rough, right, not all Faunus are useless, right?- but instead they decided that they needed _him._

...

... Hm... Maybe that would be their biggest mistake...

...

... _Yeah_... A smile formed on Cardin's face. They _sure_ needed him. He was an _important_ part of their plan, after all. It sure would be a shame if their _important_ _part_ suddenly had a change of heart. The people threatening him and his family were here at Beacon...

...

... No, if Cardin sold them out, then he would probably end up getting his family killed. So he needed a way to screw everything up for them without actually endangering his family...

...

... This was going to be harder than he hoped.

* * *

 **So… yeah… This chapter took** _ **way**_ **too long to write. To be entirely honest, I had everything up to Jaune written the very day after I uploaded the last chapter, but… writing everything after that was** _ **hard**_ **. Jaune and Penny** _ **never**_ **interacted in the actual show, and unlike with Sage and Neon,** _ **both**_ **of them have established personalities, and going severely out of character is a big no-no, but I still needed to take my changes to canon into account, and I just… Ugh. There's no excuse that this short of a chapter took two weeks to write. We're only five chapters in and I'm already having trouble; we haven't even reached a deviation point yet. I'm pathetic. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long as this one, but I am working on a few other stories as well as this, so who knows?**

 **Yeah,** _ **anyways,**_ **I'd like to thank everyone who helped out with helping me weaken Penny a bit. Your feedback inspired a few changes in the long-term story that I'm pretty happy with.**

 _ **AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS ANYTHING, I KNOW I DIDN'T WRITE RUBY GETTING HER TEAMMATE THIS CHAPTER.**_ **That was an intentional decision based on how the show went. That's coming next chapter. Who could her partner possibly be? Boy, you'll all really be surprised when you find out that it's actually going to be Neptune. Oops, spoiler.**

 **If you could leave a review, just to, like, let me know what you liked and disliked, I'd appreciate it. Even guest reviews are welcome! You don't even need to log in! Thank you again for reading and reviewing.**


	6. Chapter 6

Mercury felt elated as he slammed his foot down as hard as he could. _I needed this._ As he fired his boot and blew the head of the Beowolf beneath him clear off, Mercury cheerfully reflected on how the past two days had gone, more specifically what he wouldn't have to deal with anymore:

Jaune Arc.

That's really all there was to say, wasn't it? No more Jaune. No more dealing with stupid questions, no more marveling at his idiocy, no more conversation traps, nothing! Mercury had his own teammate now. And even better than that, his new teammate was quiet, and smart enough to stay out of Mercury's way while he blew off some steam.

 _I wonder what the effective range on these things is._ Mercury had never actually had the chance to test out his boots on living things before. Even back when he trained with his dad, he never actually got the chance to put the bullets into them while training. He had certainly thought about it, _a lot_ of times. But he never acted on it. And when the final fight broke out, Mercury hadn't even had a chance to load his boots up before the fires started, and by that point grabbing ammo would have just gotten _him_ killed instead.

Still, even if he got to actually fire bullets out of them now, it didn't feel quite right, Mercury thought as he axe-kicked another Beowolf. The… sensation he got, the _power_ behind his hits was gone, even if he was technically hitting harder now.

…

To try getting his mind off of his legs, Mercury tried just shooting a Beowolf's head off from a couple of yards away. _Killing is fun. I can see why Dad did it._ The shot came out at a weird angle, probably due to the fact that trying to time a shot while swinging his legs was probably impossible. To Mercury's surprise, the bullet actually curved, changing direction to hit the Beowolf right in the head. _Oh. I didn't know they could do that. That would have been really helpful against Dad, actually._

The shot, unfortunately, wasn't enough to kill the Beowolf in one hit, which was something that his dad had warned Mercury about back in training. Grimm and Hunters would take more than one of the small bullets his boots fired to kill. Grimm were tough, Hunters had Aura. Pressing the boot against them before firing would add the concussive force needed to punch through that. Civilians didn't have either, and you could pick them off easily. Mercury prepared to close the distance between him and the Beowolf-

But that wasn't necessary, because the Beowolf in question suddenly came down with a terrible case of "half the wolf it used to be", courtesy of Mercury's new teammate.

Mercury wasn't really fond of swords, but his teammate had this way of using his that sold him on the idea. That thing didn't cut through Grimm, it _tore_ through them: viciously and painfully. Mercury had always assumed from movies and the like that swords were supposed to make clean, painless cuts, but _that_ sword certainly proved him wrong. That looked like it hurt. Maybe he could borrow it sometime? After all, Mercury and... his teammate were partners now.

* * *

Sage could feel Mercury leering at his sword. _Creepy…_

At least Mercury could fight well, even if he seemed to be trying to hurt the Grimm rather than just kill them.

Unfortunately, his partner didn't really seem like much of a talker. Sage only really talked when he got excited or angry, so he didn't talk either. Which led to awkward silence. It was weird treating Grimm as a tension breaker. Weren't they supposed to be a threat?

Sage hadn't really expected to end up with Mercury back when he decided to launch himself off the cliff. He just thought it was a good idea to parrot. But now that he was stuck in this awkward silence, he realized that maybe he should have tried to get on Sun's team.

"Hey!" A girl's voice shot out, tearing Sage from his thoughts. He turned around to see a short, brightly-colored cat Faunus looking up at him. "Do you have a partner?!"

Maybe he could have been this girl's partner if he hadn't launched himself. Girls _love_ talking; there would be no awkward silences, that's for sure. "Unfortunately," Sage quipped as he pointed at Mercury, who… wasn't there anymore.

"WOW! Thanks for nothing, then!" The girl shot off further into the forest, leaving a rainbow behind her, probably a Semblance or something. … Was she riding on skates? In a forest? How?

"Is she gone yet?"

"Yeah."

Mercury pulled himself out of a bush. "That could've been bad." Weird, Mercury didn't seem like a stealthy person. Why had he felt the need to hide from that girl? … Ex-girlfriend, perhaps?

* * *

 _UGH, this SUCKS._ Neon wasn't having any luck finding a partner. Three groups of people in a row. _**THREE!**_ What was she supposed to do if everyone else in the world already had a partner?! What if this initiation was specifically designed to have an odd number of students, so one person would _never_ be able to find a partner?! Would not finding a partner mean she failed the initiation?! Would she get kicked out of Beacon because she failed the initiation?! WHAT THE HECK?! That's not how this was supposed to go! Neon had a plan! She was supposed to become famous here in Vale! She couldn't become famous if she got kicked out of Beacon! She wouldn't even be able to go back to Atlas! ' _Hey, Neon, I heard you weren't even good enough to get into BEACON, loser!_ ' Her life was over!

And yet, she still had to keep going. She had to! She was, objectively speaking, one of the best of the best! She trained to be a Huntress at ATLAS! So what if some of them had magic flying swords and other cool stuff?! NEON KATT DOESN'T NEED A GIMMICK, SHE'S GOOD ENOUGH ON HER OWN! _THE BEST OF THE BEST DON'T FAIL INITIATIONS!_ _ **I DON'T FAIL INITIATIONS!**_

 _Wait, that's RUBY! I'm SAVED!_ Neon never thought she would be so happy to see that dumb black and red dress, but now it was a symbol. A regular sign that her hard work, anger, and tenacity had finally paid off.

Neon shouted as hard as she could to get Ruby's attention before someone else could claim her as a partner. _There it is! EYE CONTACT!_ _ **I DID IT! I WON!**_

It was the greatest feeling in the world. To have victory dangled in front of your face for so long, and then to reach out and grab the opportunity. Who knew what the future would hold for Neon and Ruby? Who cared? Right now, everything was alright. Ruby was out this far in the forest, so it was pretty much guaranteed she didn't have a partner yet.

And even then, beside Ruby was someone else! If Ruby already had a partner, then it's entirely possible that that person-

 _ **REALIZATION.**_

" **DARN IT!** " The rainbow kitty screamed as she used all the anger in her body, more than she had ever felt before, to launch herself further into the forest.

* * *

"Wait! Neon! Come back!" Ruby watched in horror as the rainbow trailing Neon vanished into the depths of the Emerald Forest. _Why did she run away?!_ The two of them were supposed to be partners now! They made eye contact and everything.

"Who was that?"

Ruby whimpered before looking back at the last person she had run into. "That was Neon. She was supposed to be my partner."

"Hmm." He looked in the direction Neon had fired off to. "Two 'partners' in a row." Adam gave an apologetic shrug. "Like I said, I already made eye contact with Velvet, but…" he looked Ruby in the eyes, before continuing, "maybe if you hurry, you can catch her."

"She's going way too fast, I'll never be able to catch up." Ruby sighed. She was fast, but she wasn't _that_ fast. A Semblance like Neon's had to be cheating.

"Ruby." Adam suddenly glared at her. " _Go_."

"What's the point? I'll never catch-"

Adam drew his sword.

Ruby wasn't scared of Adam. Not at all. Who cared that he was way bigger and taller than her? Whatever. That's not why Ruby was running at full speed in Neon's direction. She just really, _really_ wanted to catch up to Neon.

Yep.

Not scared at all.

She could take him. Crescent Rose versus a sword? Adam wouldn't stand a chance.

No chance at all.

Her running after Neon was for Adam's benefit. Ruby just didn't want to embarrass him too bad.

 _Right, Neon. Back on topic. She wasn't with anyone else, so she probably doesn't have a partner. Well, then again, she isn't with_ me _right now, and I made eye contact with her. What if she already has a partner and I'm jumping to conclusions here?_ _What if she runs into someone else who doesn't have a partner? Am I her partner?_ Ruby sighed as she drew Crescent Rose and cleaved a Beowolf in half. _This whole thing's turning into a mess._

* * *

 _This whole thing's turning into a mess._ Ozpin took a sip from his mug as he watched Ruby's peril unfold. He had certainly been right about Neon Katt, even more than he had feared. Her temperamental attitude was already starting to make the situation worse. She had abandoned her partner the moment they made eye contact based solely on a poor reading of the situation.

At the rate she was going, her career as a Huntress was going to be a short one. It was evident where this had all been coming from. Back in Atlas Academy, everything was done in a controlled environment; emotions were never allowed to get out of control, and while Neon Katt excelled in that controlled environment, where she was reined in whenever her emotions got out of control: in this setting, designed to resemble an actual mission, with no instructors to remind her of the situation she was in, she was letting her emotions run wild, and it was already leading to bad decision making.

It was decision-making like this that lead to early casualties, and now, as Ruby Rose's partner, she was likely to get the other girl killed as well. Ozpin had no doubt about either of their combat prowess; he had witnessed Ruby's valor and Neon's intensity with enough confidence to enroll them both at Beacon. But skill alone wasn't enough to ensure survival. They were talented, but they were still just children, and whether they knew it or not, they were standing before enemies both stronger and smarter than them.

That was why they were here. They were here to become proper Huntresses, capable of standing on their own, without needing support. But as it stood, there were just two impulsive girls, both of them prone to bad decision-making.

Ozpin took a sip of his drink. Hopefully he would be able to iron that out of them, in time. But enough dwelling on Ruby and Neon. It would be in poor taste for the Headmaster of Beacon to show favoritism towards any one student. … To _show_ it, at least. Ozpin swiped his finger across the tablet before him to try finding the other students he had recruited.

Roman Torchwick and Sun Wukong. An unusual pairing, to be certain. Hopefully the… 'ex-'criminal wouldn't be too bad of an influence on the young Faunus boy. The former's bigoted nature would, hopefully, fade with time, but with adults there was no telling. Adults were even more dangerous and unpredictable than children.

Mercury Black and Sage Ayana. Sage enjoys fighting, and Mercury enjoys causing pain. A perfect match, without question.

Penny Polendina and…

…

"Jaune Arc," Glynda clarified from beside him.

"Hm." Strange, the name wasn't all that familiar to him. Jaune Arc?

"I don't care what his transcripts say, that boy is not ready for this level of combat." Ozpin silently let dread fill him as Glynda's words reminded him of who Jaune was. _Oh dear. Well, I hope for Penny's sake that she's as good as James lets on. She'll have to pull her own weight, along with some dead weight. Hopefully not literally._

James had already been reluctant to allow Ms. Polendina enrollment at Beacon, but if word got out that her partner wasn't competent enough… _Ugh._ He should have assigned her a partner from the beginning, initiation be damned. _This is a disaster in the making…_

* * *

Jaune had a weird feeling. Like someone was watching him. Judging him. A weird feeling that was cut off by the sound of explosions in the distance. "Did you hear that?"

"That would be… gunfire!" Penny declared with enough enthusiasm for two people. "From the sound of it, some of the other students have encountered enemies… not too far from here. If we hurry, we can-"

"That's okay, Penny, I'm sure they can handle it!" Jaune wasn't able to fight right now. His arm was still broken, or, at least, he thought it was broken. He never had a broken arm before, so he wasn't really sure. "We shouldn't fight unless we absolutely have to."

Penny shot Jaune a look. A look of confusion. _Oh, no. I screwed up. Think, Jaune, say something confident that the cute girl will like!_

"I-I'm just saying that we shouldn't fight their battles _for_ them, they're training to be Hunters too." _That'll do. Yeah, I'm not wrong about that either, they_ are _training to be Hunters like us._

"But isn't that what being a Huntress is all about?" Penny asked, cocking her head to the side. "Helping others in need?"

 _Ah. Crap. She's right. Well, we don't_ know _that they need our help, but that's a lazy excuse to begin with. Think, Jaune, think!_ "Well, yeah, but…"

Penny stared at him. She stared at him for a while. … A very long while. It was unnerving, to say the least. There was something about Penny's eyes that rubbed Jaune the wrong way, but what was it? They looked almost… lifeless, which was strange considering that those eyes belonged to _Penny_. The enthusiastic girl who grabbed him out of the air not even an hour ago.

"Jaune, is this about your arm?"

…

 _Crap._

"Wh-What do you mean?" Penny noticed his arm was hurt?! How? He did everything he could to avoid drawing attention to it! "There's nothing wrong with my arm!" Jaune lied.

"Jaune, are we friends?" Penny asked.

 _Friends? Well, we're partners, which means we're going to be on the same team, so…_ "I… I guess?" Something about this question felt suspicious. Like he was being lured into a...

"Friends shouldn't lie to each other."

And there it was. The dreaded guilt trap. Trying to make you feel guilty about something in order to get whatever the trap-setter wanted. He was familiar enough with it: he had grown up with seven sisters, who had used it on him enough times throughout his life that he should have seen it coming. Jaune just wasn't expecting to run into it here at Beacon. He was _hoping_ to not run into it here. And he had especially not expected Penny to utilize it.

Mainly because he always fell for it.

Jaune sighed, and wiggled his hurt arm a little bit. It hurt a lot. "I hurt my arm when you saved me earlier."

Penny's eyes widened in shock, and she flinched back. "What?! Why didn't you activate your Aura?!"

"My what?"

"..." Penny's eyes widened even more. _Ah, crap, that's probably something important, isn't it?_

Jaune almost took back his question; he _almost_ said that he actually _did_ have an 'Aura', whatever that was, and he was just messing with her. _Friends shouldn't lie to each other._ He was already in Penny's trap. He couldn't escape now. "I… I don't know what that is," Jaune admitted. It was painful to admit. It was like revealing his darkest secret, but… Jaune didn't actually know how important 'Aura' was. Maybe he already did end up revealing it without realizing what he was saying.

* * *

"You… you don't have an Aura?" Penny asked. How could Jaune not have an Aura?! He was the spitting image of a Hunter! Tall! Handsome! Blonde! He even had a sword and shield; it didn't make any logical sense!

What kind of bizarre irony was this?!

"Yeah… Or, at least, I don't think I do..." He shrugged, but winced due to the pain it likely caused his damaged arm. "You still haven't told me what Aura is, exactly."

Penny thought back to when she had rushed to save Jaune earlier. She smashed into him at full speed: that's probably what caused his arm damage! She had assumed that his Aura was able to… No, wait, that was why she had rushed to save him in the first place! Because she wasn't sure what he had to be afraid of while landing! But if what Jaune was saying was true, then his Aura wouldn't have been able to save him from the fall because he never had one to begin with! He… he would have…

Jaune needed to unlock his Aura. Now. And Penny would be the one to do it.

"Jaune." Penny grabbed onto the side of Jaune's face. He flinched at the sudden motion, but he didn't move away. "I will now unlock your Aura. Just close your eyes and concentrate on my words." Penny knew the ritual for unlocking a person's Aura; it was something that all Hunters and Huntresses must know.

"Uh… Okay..." As Jaune's eyes closed, Penny felt her Aura flare up. It was a strange sensation, to be sure, one she still wasn't all that familiar with. A part of her that she knew was there, but still remained small.

Penny closed her eyes as well. "For it is in passing that we achieve immortality." The words came out, but she suddenly felt doubt. What if this didn't work? It was a very real possibility that due to her… unique circumstances, she wouldn't be able to unlock his Aura.

"Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all." If… if this didn't work right, then there would be questions. Questions like 'why wasn't she able to unlock his Aura?' It was at times like this that Penny wished that she could feel another person's Aura. Like you were supposed to.

"Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee."

… That was it. Penny let go, and fell to her knees. If she hadn't already been running low on power, she certainly was now. That was exhausting. Would she even be able to fight like this?

"Penny?!" She looked up at Jaune, concern covering his face. There it was: a white glow, surrounding his form. His Aura was so bright, especially in contrast to her own. Jaune really was the spitting image of a Hunter. It worked. Penny had, despite her own doubts, managed to unlock a Hunter's Aura. "Are you alright?!"

"I..." Penny awkwardly stood up. It was hard. She had never felt this exhausted before: using her weapon to save Jaune, using her Aura to unlock Jaune's Aura: it was more work than she had ever done before. But she couldn't stop going. They weren't even halfway done with their mission yet. They hadn't even fought a single Grimm yet. She took a deep breath, before declaring to Jaune, "I'm feeling _fantastic!_ "

Penny hiccuped.

* * *

 **Well, for those of you still here after the hiatus, I have to say I'm sorry. I got lazy. Shouldn't happen again, at least not for TWO months. Two months, and I return with the shortest chapter so far. I'm sorry. I'm disgusted with myself for letting it get this bad.**

… **Anyway.**

 **Changing the genres again. I feel Adventure and Humor might work better? It's really not all that clear what I'm going for, I'm noticing, but to be fair, I'm still gonna be stuck in the GODDAMN Emerald Forest, where nothing altogether plot relevant happens, for a few more chapters. Hopefully, once we get out, the deviations from the main story will make it clear where I'm going from here.**

 **In any event, as always, I appreciate hearing from you all, to see what you liked and didn't like, and what you feel can/should be changed. Thank you for reading and reviewing.**


	7. Chapter 7

" _Why didn't you activate your Aura?"_

" _My what? … I… I don't know what that is."_

Glynda Goodwitch had to resist the urge to snap the tablet she was holding in half. She instead snapped her eyes from the farce before her and glared at the irresponsible man who had placed Jaune Arc in this situation.

Ozpin simply took a sip of his drink and watched both her and the scenario unfolding with an amused expression.

 _This man…_ No, this was partially Glynda's fault as well. She could tell that there was something suspicious about Jaune's transcripts, but for _WHATEVER_ reason she blindly assumed that Ozpin wouldn't just place civilians into life-threatening situations without even having their Auras unlocked.

As though he could read Glynda's mind, Ozpin announced, "For what it's worth, I didn't know his Aura wasn't unlocked."

"You would have unlocked it if you knew?"

"Of course. You know as well as I do that I wouldn't senselessly pit children against impossible odds."

"..." Glynda's glare intensified at the blatant _lie_.

In an effort to keep his composure, Ozpin took another sip of his drink and watched Penny unlock Jaune's Aura.

Glynda gave an annoyed sigh in response. She really should have noticed this sooner. Any other year, and a young man without Aura would have been discovered out _long_ ago. However, _this_ year in particular was proving to be a never-ending dilemma concerning all the new students that Ozpin had 'invited' to Beacon. Ozpin always sought out and invited 'peculiar' students to the school, but it never got _this_ bad.

Glynda was fine with taking two trained students from Atlas, that was good, ideal, even. She had no problem with taking a few students from Mistral; they wouldn't be of the same caliber as the Atlas students, but they would work all the same. Glynda could deal with accepting an assassin-in-training who had suddenly lost his master; it was all the better to teach the young man some valuable life lessons and morals while his mind was still malleable. Glynda could _accept_ that Ruby Rose had shown the valor and skill to become a Huntress a little earlier than expected. Glynda could _tolerate_ having a well-known criminal attend the school, at the very least she could rationalize it with a 'friends close, enemies closer' explanation.

But the thing that kept Glynda Goodwitch from keeping a closer eye on the rest of the new student body was another invitee entirely. This one student was someone that Glynda could not, even in the depths of her fantasies, rationalize being at this school. It was as if Ozpin had brought the student here for the SOLE purpose of distracting Glynda.

With an irritated sigh, she switched the screen on the tablet to display the subject of her irritation.

* * *

Beacon Academy has always had a rather stilted status with the media. While it was a subject of pride for the majority of Vale, a simple matter of fact was that, outside of the school, little was known about the school's inner workings.

It was, after all, a school for Hunters and Huntresses, who made up a microscopic percentage of the population of Vale. It was a school for the best and brightest Hunters-in-training that Vale had to offer. But the woman standing here in the Emerald Forest had always wondered whether Beacon Academy was a _school_ for Hunters or a school for _Hunters._

So when the Headmaster himself came before her and offered her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enroll at Beacon Academy, how could Lisa Lavender possibly refuse? Lisa was a multitalented woman, graduating at the top of her class before becoming a reporter; she was a fast learner, so beginning here in an advanced school instead of a more basic one like Signal Academy shouldn't be too much of a problem. After all, Beacon was a _school_ for hunters; they wouldn't just throw her to the Beowolves, as it were, without any training.

Or so she thought, for now Lisa Lavender found herself having _literally_ been thrown into a forest full of the Creatures of Grimm, without _any_ training. As she looked back towards the cliff overlooking the Emerald Forest, she couldn't help but wonder if it was too late to back out.

But she couldn't stand down now. She had seen another adult besides herself at the launch pads. Her pride would not allow herself to be shown up by anyone. If it had just been teenagers, she could have stepped down without any regrets; but the fact that there was someone else her age here, no, perhaps even a bit _older_ than her, triggered a competitive spark that she hadn't felt since high school. She wouldn't be upstaged by anyone, even if they strongly resembled the dangerous criminal Roman Torchwick.

So, Lisa Lavender continued marching onward through the Emerald Forest. She had yet to find a partner, but she wasn't too concerned about that. Lisa was a patient woman. As long as she didn't encounter any Grimm, she would be fine, and even then her 'Aura' would protect her.

The idea of 'Aura' was simple enough to Lisa, even if she didn't know the intricacies of the concept. It worked as a shield that covered your body, simultaneously served as an amplifier for your weapons, and Aura can, to a certain extent, heal wounds. All that you needed was for someone that has their Aura 'unlocked' to 'unlock' your Aura for you, which Headmaster Ozpin had been happy to do for her. Lisa had already spent enough time pondering the more minute details of Aura. If someone else was needed to unlock it for you, then that meant that _someone_ , a long time ago, had to have had their Aura unlocked without anyone unlocking it for them. How did _they_ unlock their Aura? Animals naturally had their own Auras unlocked, but who unlocked _their_ Auras? Did they _need_ to unlock their Auras? If they didn't, then why did humans need to?

It was thoughts like these that had almost cost Lisa Lavender a good night's sleep. She had a tendency to overthink things, but at least she had the self-control to remind herself that she could just look it up in the academy's library when she made the cut. _When,_ not _if._

A glimmer of silver appeared at the horizon of her vision, and she increased her pace through the forest. _There!_ Finding a partner had been easy enough, if a bit time consuming. Now all she had to do was make eye contact with her new partner and make her way to the 'path' to the 'ruins'.

"Hello there!" Lisa called out as the individual in question came into view. It was almost certainly a male, with his back turned to her, but she couldn't help but feel something was strange as he seemed to freeze up at the sound of her voice.

The young, brown haired man was dressed in full plate mail, which… made a lot more sense than the business suit that she was wearing. Whether she had realized it or not, Lisa had been putting _a lot_ of faith in Aura, something that she had only unlocked a few weeks ago. The young man wore a mace on his hip as well, a good weapon, based on Lisa's admittedly limited knowledge of weaponry. If nothing else, the boy certainly _looked_ the part of a Hunter.

He still wasn't looking at her. No, based on the way his head was twitching, it was more like he was actively trying to _avoid_ looking at her, and having some trouble doing it. Perhaps he was waiting here to try and get a specific person as a partner, and Lisa being here was going to screw that up?

Unfortunately for him, he was going to be Lisa Lavender's partner, whether he wanted to be or not. Lisa Lavender _always_ got what she wanted. She increased her pace to a jog. "Hello there!" she called out again, knowing full well that he had already heard her, but the fact of the matter was that she kind of wanted to see the boy squirm some more, seeing as he was obviously conflicted about turning around.

The boy took a step forward upon hearing her voice, but by then it was too late, for the former reporter had already grabbed onto his shoulders. She pulled on his left shoulder to get him to turn around to see…

Two blue eyes staring into hers with a confusing expression that could only be described as joy mixed with _abject terror_.

It certainly was a strange expression.

* * *

 _Fuck. Oh, fuck. I don't… fucking…_

Cardin was in an interesting position, to say the least. He had suddenly gained something to be very happy about that was also something that would likely end up getting him and _everyone_ he cared about killed.

On one hand, the woman standing behind him: his new partner was a _babe_ , the kind of person you saw on the news and assumed couldn't _actually_ be real. Purple- nah, that was more of a lavender, really- hair, yellow eyes, she looked like she was in her mid-twenties maybe, and she was wearing a black suit that fit her body _really_ well in _all_ the right places. And the fact that she was Cardin's new partner meant that none of Team Asshole would be able to claim him as their partner. _Oh yeah_.

On the other hand _that_ meant that he was no longer any use to their little hit squad and he was probably gonna get killed. _Oh no._

Back on the first hand, this meant that whatever they were planning that Cardin was an important part of would fall apart, completely ruining the whole assassination plan, which was what Cardin had been hoping for. _Oh yeah._

But back on the second hand, this meant that they had no reason to keep Cardin's family alive. _Oh no._

All of this had been running through his head when he had heard this _babe_ call out to him. He _did_ want to screw up Adam's plan, but he had kind of been hoping for a situation that didn't result in a mass slaughter of the Winchester line. So he hesitated instead of running and calling out for one of the others, and now here he was staring into a hottie's eyes, wondering what he had done to have _this_ situation be a bad thing.

"Hey…" Cardin barely managed to say. Normally he would be doing his best to impress a hot twenty-something that was holding onto him, but all his confidence kind of died with his hopes and dreams, just now.

"Hello there," the _ten out of ten_ responded with a smirk. It was like she knew that she just condemned his entire lineage to an early end, and was rubbing it in with her very, very attractive smile. "Lisa Lavender. Ace reporter, first-year Huntress, and your partner, starting now."

Cardin took a deep breath to try calming himself. _Oh well. Better enjoy this while I still can._ "I'm Cardin. Cardin Winchester." He paused before mimicking Lisa's introduction. "Heir to the Winchester house, first-year Hunter, and your _boyfriend_ , starting now."

She just rolled her eyes and sighed, before detaching herself from his shoulders and walking away.

...

… Whatever.

That was the response he knew was coming anyways. He knew that that wouldn't be enough.

It wouldn't be fun if she just went along with it.

…

… Cardin had _really_ been hoping that that would have been enough and she had went along with it.

… Hopefully he would score before his untimely death.

… Hopefully he wouldn't _need_ to die an untimely death.

… Hopefully he would come up with a plan to _avoid_ an untimely death by the time he ran into Adam and Blake again.

… Hopefully they would be in a listening mood.

* * *

As Ozpin overheard Cardin's _abysmal_ attempt at a pickup line on Glynda's tablet, he couldn't help but smirk. It had certainly been worthwhile bringing Lisa Lavender to study here at Beacon. If only because of the reaction that she had brought with her. Glynda was, for whatever reason, distracted entirely by the woman, which had allowed Ozpin to accept more oddities into the school without them being investigated too thoroughly.

And speaking of oddities, Ozpin continued watching the two _very_ special cases he wouldn't have been able to sneak in without Glynda's attention being elsewhere.

… To be fair, Ozpin really _didn't_ know that Jaune Arc didn't have his Aura unlocked. He had assumed that any student who applied to Beacon had to have had the basic knowledge needed to not get themselves killed on day one, but the young man seemed to be going out of his way to prove everything Ozpin thought about him either completely wrong or completely right.

Still, Ozpin wasn't too concerned about Jaune Arc. If Penny was capable of carrying her own weight, then Jaune would probably not die _at the moment._ But therein lied the problem.

Ozpin had to admit he didn't know much about Penny Polendina. He knew she was very special to her father and James, he knew that using her weapon's ranged function exhausted her, and James had made Ozpin _very_ aware of the fact that her Aura was much, much weaker than any other students in the class; given her circumstances, that was understandable.

These three things made Ozpin _very_ uncomfortable. And yet, from here, Ozpin couldn't do anything but watch and wait.

* * *

Jaune flexed his arm. It still kind of hurt, but it was nice to know that it wasn't actually broken: it had just been smashed in between his shield and his chest plate when Penny had slammed into him earlier. The pain was already starting to go away, which was good. "So, you're _sure_ my arm isn't broken?"

"Positively! If your arm _was_ broken, your Aura would be trying to attach the bone back together, and failing! It's well-documented that broken bones are the number-two cause of Hunters retiring, behind fatalities!" Penny stated this trivia with a great, big smile on her face that scared Jaune a lot. "If your arm had been broken, you would be in immense pain from the bones reattaching themselves incorrectly, to the point that you likely would have fallen unconscious!"

 _So… It's a_ very _good thing she told me this_ after _unlocking my Aura. I don't think I would have let her do it if I knew the potential long term-_

 _Wait… She… She knew that there might be long term consequences, but unlocked my Aura anyways?_ Jaune gave Penny a quick look-over, seeing if there were any signs of malicious intent on Penny's face.

She simply smiled back. But there was something about the way she was looking at him that rubbed him the wrong way. What was it? Her smile looked… stiff, and her eyes… They seemed... weird… but weird in a way that Jaune couldn't exactly place.

"Penny, are you sure you're feeling okay?" Jaune asked.

"I'm splendid!"

 _Hiccup._

Maybe he was just seeing things, but it seemed to him that her smile looked a lot more cheerful before the whole 'unlocking Jaune's Aura and explaining Aura to Jaune' thing just a minute ago. _But I guess that makes sense, I guess I would be pretty down too if I had to explain something basic like that to someone who_ should _already know about it._

Yeah, maybe it was just him seeing things, then. Jaune took the moment to thank Penny again for unlocking his Aura, before the two of them starting walking in the direction Penny said the Forest Temple was. Jaune was glad Penny knew where they were going, because Jaune sure didn't.

But while Penny led their little adventure, Jaune took the moment to take a closer look at Penny's weapon.

… Which she didn't seem to have.

Jaune quietly looked at all the places that a weapon might be, but… she didn't seem to have one. There wasn't one on her hip, or on her back, and her sleeves sure weren't big enough to hide a weapon in, so… "Penny, where's your weapon?"

"Hmm?"

"Your weapon. I haven't seen your weapon yet." This was a weird trend, because earlier, Mercury didn't seem to have a weapon on him either.

Penny gave Jaune a concerned look, as though he had said something insane. "You've seen it already."

"I… Have?" _No, I don't remember seeing Penny with a weapon. What could it be? It must be something pretty small, if I can't see it on her. Or… Maybe she accidentally dropped it when she saved me earlier?_ What was the last weapon Jaune saw? It had to have been around when Penny saved him... A sword? No, Crocea Mors was _his_ weap-

…

"Hey, Penny, are your weapons flying swords?"

"No."

 _Huh, there goes that theory then. Weird, I almost forgot about the fact that I saw flying swords earlier. It's been a long… hour._

"They don't actually fly, they're held in the air by wires," Penny clarified.

 _Oh, they were held in the air by wires? I guess that that makes a little more sense than magic or-_ "... Wait, what?" Jaune stared into Penny's weird eyes, that stared back at him. "So… your weapons _are_ swords, then?"

"Correct."

"Can I see them again?"

"Yes!"

Suddenly, there were swords.

Jaune didn't exactly count them, but he did make special note of one thing. They definitely _looked_ like they were flying. But they _were_ being held by wires. He could tell by how close the swords were to his face, but even then they were barely visible, the wires seeming to outright disappear after a few inches.

Speaking of proximity to swords, Jaune suddenly had a deeper understanding of why deers froze up in headlights. He wasn't really sure of what he was supposed to do that wouldn't result in a Jaune-kebab: screaming in terror might cause Penny to panic, and trying to run seemed like… a _very_ bad idea. So here he was, _closely_ examining Penny's weapon. "... Hey Penny?"

"Yes, Jaune?"

"You control these swords, right?"

"Indeed. Or, rather, the wires control the swords, and I control the wires. It's simple for me because the wires are a part of-" suddenly Penny froze up like she said something she wasn't supposed to. The swords retracted back to Penny all of a sudden, which both terrified Jaune and relieved him. "Um… never mind." The swords all disappeared behind her back. … _Wait, that can't be right. I looked at her back earlier, and there weren't a bunch of swords back there! OR WIRES, FOR THAT MATTER!_

"So... how do you control the wires?"

"..." Penny looked away, and didn't answer.

"Penny?"

"Aura," Penny answered. _Hiccup._

"Aura?"

"Yes. I control the wires… with my Aura." _Hiccup._ "It's something that only I can do, though. No one else can do it. If you tried it with _your_ Aura you wouldn't be able to move them."

… _Wait a minute. I think I just noticed something…_ "You control them with your Aura."

"Yes." _Hiccup._

… _She keeps hiccuping, but only_ after _some of her sentences, but some she says just fine. Does that mean…?_ "Penny, what's your favorite color?"

She turned back to Jaune, face lit up, _visibly_ happy to have changed the subject. "Green!"

"What's my name?"

"Jaune. It… It _is_ Jaune, correct, because earlier you said-"

"What's your name?"

"Penny! Penny Polendina! Jaune, are you okay?! Your Aura hasn't caused you amnesia, has-?"

"How do you control the wires?"

She froze again, and there was a pause before she answered, "Aura." _Hiccup._

"You're lying to me."

Penny recoiled as though she had been punched in the gut. "N-No, I'm not!" _Hiccup._

"You keep hiccuping, but only when you tell lies." Jaune took a step towards Penny. "Come on, Penny, are you really going to make _me_ say it to _you_ now?" Penny didn't respond, she was struggling to keep eye contact. Jaune sighed. "Penny, are we friends?"

She just nodded, shakily.

"Friends shouldn't lie to each other."

"I…" Penny suddenly tensed up, her strange eyes widening, and stared off into the distance or something. "I'll have to explain it later."

"Later? Why not now?"

"Because it seems we are in danger."

"Huh?" Jaune turned around to see- "Oh." _Right, Grimm. I kind of… I kind of forgot they were supposed to be here._

Jaune had done plenty of studying about Grimm before he came to Beacon. He had assumed that the first Grimm that he would ever have to fight would be something small: a Beowolf, or an Ursa (but those weren't really that small). Still, sometimes it was better to dive right into the big stuff, right?

It didn't get much bigger than a Deathstalker.

… Jaune looked down at Crocea Mors sitting on his hip, and then back up at the giant murderous scorpion looming over them, and then at Penny who seemed to be coming down with a nasty case of 'deer in headlights', then back to the Deathstalker, then at the Deathstalker's stinger, and then right back at Crocea Mors.

"Hey Penny? Which way is the Forest Temple again?"

The words seemed to snap Penny out of her trance, and she looked at him. "It's… a few hundred meters from where we are now, in..." she pointed, luckily enough, _away_ from the Deathstalker, "that direction."

Jaune grabbed onto Penny's wrist. Penny didn't seem to be ready for combat, Jaune wasn't all that confident in Crocea Mors all of a sudden, and that Deathstalker's armor looked _pretty_ tough. He and Penny were partners now, so he was responsible for _both_ of their safeties. They were both part of 'Team Jaune', and Jaune was the leader of Team Jaune. Leaders were supposed to advance with their followers. So, Jaune made his first order to advance as a leader:

"Let's go to the Forest Temple," and Team Jaune began advancing as fast as they could _away_ from impending death.

* * *

… Ozpin finally exhaled, and silently thanked Jaune for his decision to run away. It made sense that the young man had chose to run away from that fight rather than pointlessly endanger himself and his partner, given his background.

Still, on the subject of the team, Ozpin was far more concerned about the enigmatic young Miss Polendina. Yes, there, the cracks were starting to show. Penny had frozen up in the face of the Deathstalker, which more or less confirmed what Ozpin had expected to be the case. Even though she had been exhausted by using her weapon's ranged function, even though her Aura was strained from unlocking her partner's, even though her partner was still getting used to having his Aura unlocked, Penny hadn't thought to do the most logical thing to do when the odds are against you in battle: retreat.

That would likely be James' fault, now that Ozpin thought about it; James Ironwood had never been the type to run away, he always _forced_ himself through impossible situations. It was honestly baffling how he held to that mindset after all it had cost him. Hopefully, Ozpin would be able to teach Penny the downside of such an ideology. Or, perhaps, Ozpin mused while he looked at the duo running through the Emerald Forest, _he_ wouldn't have to be the one to teach her anything.

Ozpin switched the camera over to the Forest Temple to see that Jaune and Penny would be the first to-

…

How long had Neon Katt been there?

* * *

 _Ugh. This stinks. My head hurts. Why does stuff like this always happen to ME? Am I the unluckiest person on Remnant, or what? My head HURTS._

Neon Katt, in her boost inspired by _pure rage_ , had managed to arrive at the Forest Temple in just under a minute, due to the fact that had been going so fast that she almost shot right past the thing. She already grabbed one of the _SUPER LAME_ chess pieces that they were supposed to grab, so now all she needed to do was wait for a partner to show up. And boy, oh, boy, it was nice to see that _NO ONE WAS COMING!_ Was this even the Forest Temple?! IT HAD TO BE, RIGHT?! IT'S A _TEMPLE_ IN THE _FOREST_! But if it _were_ the Forest Temple, then why wasn't anyone else here?! Neon had already been waiting for ten minutes! TEN! _DID EVERYONE ELSE DIE ALREADY; WHERE ARE THEY?!_

Neon took a few deep breaths to try and regain her composure and make her head stop hurting. No, no, it made sense she got her _WAY_ earlier than everyone else. How could any of these Vale chumps compare to someone from Atlus, _let alone THE_ Neon Katt? Nah, she was here to break some records. For instance, she was pretty sure that she had broken the land speed record back there, after she saw Ruby with-

 _RUBY._

Just thinking about her made Neon's head hurt again. Ruby let her down! Neon had been counting on her! Why did she have to get a partner of her own?! And more than that, why did Ruby's partner just look like a boy version of Ruby?! _DUMB BLACK AND RED CLOTHES AND STUPID BLACK AND RED HAIR! I bet they both think they're_ super _cool, huh, with their SUPER COOL WEAPONS, HUH?! Well, the jokes on them! I'm gonna get a partner that's got a WAY COOLER WEAPON THAN EITHER OF THEIRS!_

Penny had pretty much the coolest weapon ever (although Neon would have to do something about her clingy friend's dumb looking clothes)! Penny wouldn't let Neon down! And if Penny already had a partner, then she wouldn't for long! Huntresses were supposed to solve problems with violence, so NEON KATT WAS GONNA SOLVE THIS PROBLEM WITH _**VIOLENCE!**_

"Neon, WAIT!" An _annoyingly_ familiar voice called out.

 _Oh great. Just GREAT. First person to show up here and it's Ruby and boy-Ruby. I hate this. My head hurts._

Neon sat back up on the podium she grabbed her chess piece from. _Whatever. Penny's gotta come through here later anyways, so I guess I'll just have to deal with this for a minute._

Footsteps approached, and Neon closed her eyes and looked away from their source.

"Neon! Do you have a partner?!"

 _OH GREAT, NOW SHE'S RUBBING IT IN!_ "Yep!" Neon lied.

"Wh-WHAT?! Oh no! I thought for sure-"

"And my partner's Penny!" Neon smugly lied.

"Really?! Where is she?!"

 _Ugh, really?! You're really going to try to rip THIS victory away from me, too?_ "She's catching up. I _was_ going pretty fast," Neon lied matter-of-factly, before opening her eyes and smugly looking down at Ruby and her dumb-looking partner.

… Who wasn't with her.

* * *

"What happened to boy-Ruby?" Neon asked, looking around.

"... Who?" Ruby asked back as she grabbed the rook chess piece that was on the podium opposite Neon. 'Boy-Ruby'? Was there some poor boy running around with a girl's name? Did _he_ have a partner? It would be kind of weird to be partners with someone with her name, but at this point, Ruby would take what she could get.

This whole thing was all going wrong. It turned out that Neon _did_ have a partner after all, so Ruby had tried to keep up with her for pretty much no reason. Oh well. Neon had led Ruby to the Forest Temple, so it wasn't a _total_ bust; and from the looks of things, she was the second person to get here besides Neon. At least when a partner _did_ show up she'd be ready. Maybe 'boy-Ruby' would show up. … Actually, hopefully someone who _wasn't_ also named Ruby would show up. It would be really weird to be partners with someone that had the same name as her.

But Ruby's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a boy yelling. She and Neon both turned to look in the direction of the yelling. He _was_ yelling words, but it was kind of hard to tell what he was saying, due to the fact something that sounded like rolling thunder was also approaching.

A blonde burst out from the treeline, holding someone by their wrist, practically dragging her along. _Oh, so he's already got a partner. That's not- Oh, wait! That's Penny with him! And Neon said that Penny is_ her _partner, so that means_ he's _free!_

Ruby took a few steps towards them, and she heard Neon's skates as she dismounted from the podium she was sitting on, before finally hearing what the blonde was saying clearly. "RUN!"

Ruby paused, and turned to look at Neon, who looked back at her. "Run?" they both asked.

"DEATHSTALKER!"

And as suddenly as the blonde and redhead before it, the Grimm entered the clearing near the Forest Temple, knocking down all of the trees in its way. Ruby took it all in. How big was that thing? Maybe fifteen feet wide? _Twenty_ feet long? The stinger alone looked as big as she was.

Ruby tried her hardest. She _really_ didn't want to come across as a crazy person to the blonde running towards her, and both of her friends that had a good view of her face. But try as she might, Ruby couldn't help the great big smile crawling onto her face as she sized up the scorpion. Her hand, without any conscious effort, found its way to Crescent Rose. Finally, what she had been waiting for.

No more 'small talk'.

No more 'making friends'.

No more worrying about 'partners'.

It was time to do what she and her family did best. Ruby wasn't here to socialize.

Ruby was here to _hunt._

* * *

 **So, I can't help but feel that I may have been relying on Ozpin and Glynda a little too much for transitions. Sorry about that; should be gone now that this chapter's over, and the next one's where everything starts solving itself.**

 **I'd apologize for how long it took to get this out, but I imagine you're as tired of hearing me say that about every chapter as I am of saying it. I'll just explain that this chapter in particular went through several page-one rewrites over the past month. I'll admit when it comes to being a writer, I'm a 'gardener' rather than an 'architect'. Rather than plan it all out in advance, I** _ **prefer**_ **to stray from whatever plan I had when I started, and go with the flow. That said, I recently sat down and plotted** _ **all**_ **of the future events, so the only thing for me to do now is connect those events.**

… **Which is the hard part.**

 **Also, starting _this_ chapter, I'm going to be including alternate endings to the story, you know, just in case I decide to go on hiatus again or discontinue the story or, you know, _die._ So that _you_ can have closure (and if the ending's bad, you can just go back and say " _HERE'S_ where the story ended").**

 **In other words, they're 100% canon _until_ the next chapter goes up. After that... Think of them as non-sequiturs, or perhaps Omakes, I guess, because the tone of the alternate endings is going to vary from sensical to off-the-wall insane, from humorous to serious. They'll also be a little lower quality, due to not _actually_ being canon.**

 **... That said, this Alt. Ending probably would have been better for last chapter, seeing as that's when it takes place. OH WELL.**

* * *

Adam silently put his weapon back into its sheath as Ruby ran away. Velvet could only glare at him in annoyance. Did he feel like a big person, scaring off little girls with his sword? Was _this_ really what the White Fang had fallen to, that their leaders needed to _threaten_ people in order to get through _conversations?_

Adam put a hand to his head and scowled. Apparently, talking to Ruby had given him a headache. Velvet was well aware that some faunus were anxious around humans, but this was honestly pretty pathetic. Like a toddler attacking other children to try and get them to leave him alone. And _this_ was the person that was holding her family hostage in order to get her compliance?

No.

No, Velvet Scarlatina may be lacking in confidence, but she wasn't just going to lie back and be threatened by a _boy_ that wasn't even able to get through a single _conversation._ She would take things into her own hands, here and now. The people here at Beacon would be able to help her. They were real Hunters and Huntresses; if _this_ was the best that the White Fang had to offer, then the rank-and-file wouldn't stand a chance. But there was one obstacle in her way now.

Velvet silently eyed up Adam. She knew that he was faster than her, but with the element of surprise, that speed wouldn't mean anything. But she didn't have any way of attacking him that would allow her to keep that advantage. Her weapon would glow, and make too much noise if she deployed it, tipping him off. So, she needed a distraction. Something that would take his attention off of her for a few minutes, even a few _seconds_ , and get him to drop his guard.

And, as her ears were happy to report, a distraction had found its way to them.

"Sir," Velvet reported, trying her very best to stay polite and keep any malicious intent out of her voice. "We've got company."

Adam suddenly snapped out of his trance and put his hand back on his weapon. "Where?"

Velvet didn't need to answer, as the King Taijitu's first head lunged at them. Both of them dodged away, but Velvet couldn't help but wonder if she could have been rid of Adam just like that if she hadn't said anything. Honestly, that may have been better for her; it would be easy to explain to Blake Belladonna. Before she got what was coming to _her_ , too. Still, she wasn't too keen on fighting this monstrous snake on her own, she decided as her weapon made a copy of Adam's sword.

Adam waited for an opportunity to arise, and Velvet did the same. Despite that, the two's attentions were directed at two _very_ different things.

The second head reared up from its hiding place, and lunged towards Adam. With a single slash, its head was split into two, and the halves began to wither away. Adam's sword was nightmarish. How could anyone wield such a weapon and think of themselves as a good person?

... Velvet looked down at her own imitation weapon. ... _Well, in my defense, he started it._

With one head gone, Adam sheathed his blade and made his approach towards the remaining head. It stared at him, then back at Velvet. It lunged towards Velvet, before suffering the same fate as its sibling by her hands.

Adam stared at the Grimm as it began to wither away. "Good work. Exemplar, even. Your weapon, with your reflexes... you could be something great, if you put your mind to it." He turned his back to her.

And that was all she needed. Velvet didn't know too much about Adam's weapon, but she knew that it could cut through Aura and Grimm hide alike, without needing to break through it. The same could be said of the imitation in her hands. It could bisect a man just as easily as the original.

"You... Why would you betray your own kind like this...?" the top half of Adam Taurus asked, staring down at his own withering body. "Do you even know what you've done? That by killing me, you're damning Faunus everywhere, to a life of inferiority, to a life as minorities?"

Velvet didn't have an answer to his question. To be honest, she hadn't been thinking about the long term effects of killing off a leader of the White Fang. Maybe she should have thought it through more. And yet, as she watched the man who had planned to destroy Beacon from the inside wither away into nothingness, Velvet couldn't help but feel proud of herself.

One down, one to go.

* * *

 **PROBLEM SOLVED, STORY OVER.**

 **So, when the next chapter goes up, the above section becomes non-canon. In other words, when bad things start happening to the characters (and they _will_ , don't you worry), you can come back here and blame Velvet for not killing off Adam when she had the chance.**

 **ANYWAYS, thank you for reading, and if you have any feedback (such as problems you have with the chapter, or just your own thoughts on the story), I'd like to hear it. See you next time! Hopefully we won't be down a Ren by next chapter!**


	8. Chapter 8

Jaune had thought that he had made the right decision, calling out to others, making sure that no one gets mauled by the colossal Grimm scorpion that was tailing him and Penny. And when he finally reached the clearing where the structure that he _assumed_ had to be the Forest Temple was, he saw two girls waiting there, validating his choice to yell. He didn't want anyone to get hurt, especially not anyone who he assumed didn't do anything wrong to begin with.

But when one of aforementioned girls started grinning like a lunatic, Jaune started to feel as though he perhaps should stop being courteous of others, and that maybe now was a good time to start judging people on their appearances. The girl in question, dressed in all black and red (which, coincidentally, made her look like a villain), pulled a big red block out from behind her back.

"What is she doing?!" Jaune asked Penny as he continued to lead the other half of Team Jaune away from certain death. _Why isn't that girl running away? Why aren't_ either _of the girls running away?!_ Maybe that big red block that the girl was holding had something to do with it? "What is that thing?!"

"That is a highly customizable, high-impact sniper rifle," Penny answered with a dissonant calmness, as though the two of them were not running away from a giant killer Grimm.

"What?!" Jaune had to look back in confusion at Penny, but his eyes shot back forwards when the Deathstalker also entered his field of view. Jaune _really_ didn't want to know how close it was to him. "That's a gun?! But it's just a big red block!" How could that thing possibly be a gun? It was way too big to-

The sounds of a _very_ loud gun firing and a bullet whizzing over their heads quickly changed Jaune's opinion of Penny's assessment of the situation. _What?! Why is she firing at us?!_

Jaune had thought that calling out would be a good idea, but now they were being _shot at_ by one of the people he had been trying to save, and they were _still_ being followed by the Deathstalker, meaning they _had_ to run towards the crazed gunwoman shooting at them.

"It's also a scythe."

* * *

The bullet scratched the Deathstalker's armor, but didn't break it. That meant that this particular Deathstalker was probably an older one, since older Grimm tended to have thicker armor. So, how was Ruby supposed to deal with that thicker armor?

Would its underbelly be a better place to attack? It wouldn't make a lot of sense to have armor there, but how would Ruby get there? And even if she _could_ get under it, there wouldn't even be enough room to use Crescent Rose in its gun form, let alone as a scythe.

Maybe the eyes would work? Did Grimm need their eyes to hunt? Ruby had overheard in class a long time ago that Grimm were attracted to negative emotions, but did that mean they didn't need to see with their eyes? Did the eyes even _do_ anything? _Dad was right, I really should have paid more attention in class._ Still, with no other ideas available to her, she looked down the scope of her weapon to see a big pink bow.

... Penny's big pink bow.

Realization dawned on Ruby and she felt her smile crack. _Oops. I probably should have said something_ before _I fired at the Deathstalker._ Penny and that blonde probably weren't psychic, so they probably weren't aware she was going to start shooting at it.

…

… _Oh, well. I'm sure they know that if I_ wanted _to hit them, I totally would have. Back to shooting._ Ruby took aim again, trying to decide which of the eyes looked particularly shootable. The second eye from the right was appealing, but the burning hatred she could see in the far left eye was like a big sign saying 'Shoot Me' to Ruby. She decided to split the difference and aim at the second eye on the left, and pulled the trigg-

Crescent Rose's barrel was suddenly smacked down by Neon just as Ruby fired, and the bullet buried itself a few feet in front of the duo approaching, the blonde yelping in terror in response. "Wha- Neon, why?!" Ruby stared in horror at where she fired, then at Penny and the blonde, before looking up at the Faunus responsible for making Ruby miss her shot.

"Woah, calm down, Rubes," Neon's worried expression made Ruby realize exactly how bad the situation probably looked from an outside perspective. "Let me grab Penny first before you accidentally blow her head off, okay?"

Ruby would have contested that, that she wouldn't miss if Neon hadn't interfered, but the fact that she had definitely almost hit that blonde just now gave Neon's argument a little merit. Wasn't he the person that she was trying to get as her partner since Neon was taken? Shooting him probably wouldn't be a very good first impression.

… Which made her decision to shoot at the Grimm without any warning look like a _really_ bad idea in retrospect. _That_ was _definitely_ a bad first impression. "O-okay, just hurry, okay?" Ruby realized that maybe she _should_ have been focusing on the whole 'partners' thing, instead of just focusing on killing Grimm.

Neon gave a confident smile. "I'll be quick." Ruby knew that she would. With Neon's Semblance, she would easily be able to pull Penny and the blonde to safety before the Deathstalker would ever reach them.

She turned, and a rainbow-trailed girl shot out towards the duo approaching. She made sure to approach at an angle, so that she could grab them and get away without having to head straight into the Deathstalker. Ruby prepared to fire Crescent Rose, so that the moment the range was clear, one of those eyes would pop. The rainbow shot forth and grabbed Penny, yanking her away from the monster, and disappeared back into the forest.

… And leaving one very confused and scared-looking blonde boy, that stayed as the center of the Deathstalker's attention, behind. "Huh. I guess she _did_ say she was going to grab _Penny_ ," Ruby realized out loud. This left her in a pretty bad situation. She _did_ need to try and kill the Deathstalker, even if it made her look bad. And boy, would it. … _Oh well, I guess that I've already blown this first impression thing, so, in for an inch, in for a mile, right?_ "Sorry!" Ruby called out as she pulled the trigger.

* * *

Jaune didn't even have a chance to be stunned, despite all that had just happened. The black-and-red girl shot the ground in front of him, which killed any doubts that she _was_ shooting at him and not the Deathstalker, and then the other girl _turned into a_ _rainbow_ , shot out in front of him, told him, "Stealing this, bye!" and then disappeared with Penny! And then another bullet went over his head! It was a very good thing that this would-be assassin's aim was _terrible_ , otherwise he'd be a dead man!

While Jaune would like to take a moment to worry about the fact that Penny just got kidnapped, the fact of the matter was that whatever just happened, _she_ was probably safer now than _he_ was: stuck between a small girl with a giant murder gun, and a giant murder scorpion. It was time to be smart about this! If Jaune didn't do something, and fast, then this was probably going to be _it_ for him!

His hands found their way to Crocea Mors, trying to think of some way to use it. The girl had a gun, so she had the range advantage on him, and the Deathstalker's armor still looked a little too thick to cut through. That, and he _really_ didn't want to turn his back on the girl shooting at him, so attacking was out of the question. But the shield…

Would the shield be able to block the bullets? Jaune looked back up at the Deathstalker's terrifying stinger, which his shield _definitely_ wouldn't be able to defend against. So, Jaune took the best of two bad situations and raised his shield, blocking the girl from his view as he continued to run forward.

More shots were fired, much faster than before, and the Deathstalker screeched in pain behind him. A plan was starting to come together. _Okay, so her missing me is paying off alright for me._ Maybe that gun of hers would be able to kill off the Grimm, so he had _that_ going for him at least. _The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? But I_ am _going right towards her, so what am I going to do when I get there?_

* * *

As another one of the eyes popped, Ruby did a celebratory fist-pump. So far, this plan to take out the eyes was really working out for her, because the Deathstalker was roaring in pain from her shots. But would taking out the eyes be enough to kill it? _Whatever, just five more to go._

Ruby was really glad that the blonde had raised his shield, giving her a little bit more breathing room to shoot. It meant that she could fire faster, without having to worry about hitting him. But as he got closer, Ruby realized that the two of them technically hadn't made eye contact yet, so they weren't partners yet. She _really_ needed to prioritize that, but as the boy got closer, the Deathstalker got closer as well. Ruby was going to have to relocate soon, but if she didn't make eye contact soon, then she was probably going to forget. But now he had his shield raised, covering his face. So she was going to have to wait until the blonde dropped his guard to relocate.

Ruby fired another shot, and the blonde was maybe ten seconds of running away, the Deathstalker fifteen seconds. The shield was still up. She fired again, and her nerves were starting to get the best of her. Another eye popped, leaving the monster with two, but the monster simply refused to die. It was time for Ruby to move, but she still couldn't, not until the blonde made eye contact with her.

The blonde lowered his shield and pulled it back, revealing sapphire eyes. _THERE! Okay, it's time to_ -

* * *

As Jaune slammed his shield into the shooter's face, a realization hit him. He didn't have a plan for what to do _after_ he got to the girl shooting at him. Was his plan to leave the girl behind as a distraction for the Deathstalker so that he could get away? That wasn't exactly a very heroic plan. And now that he thought about it, Grimm don't need to eat, so it would probably just run right over her and keep following him anyways. But still, he had to do _something_ about the girl shooting at him, and knocking her out would… probably get her killed, upon reflection. Ouch. That didn't feel good to think about. But the deed was done, and she was already-

"Ow!" The girl fell back onto her butt, holding her face while her big red block of a weapon fell awkwardly to the ground. Apparently Jaune wasn't as good at knocking people out as he hoped he was, which was both a good thing for his karma and a bad thing for his plans of surviving today. "What was that fo-?"

The Deathstalker's stinger crashed into the ground between Jaune and the girl, bringing both of their minds back into the situation at hand. Both of them scrambled away, in opposite directions, meaning that Jaune still had two things that wanted to kill him. But at least Jaune wasn't stuck _between_ them now.

And it seemed like Jaune's luck had finally turned, seeing as the Deathstalker turned its attention away from him and onto the girl, who finally seemed to realize who the _real_ threat in this clearing was. The girl made a mad dash for the treeline, finally disarmed, and of no threat to anyone. Seeing an opportunity, Jaune decided to make a break for where Penny and the rainbow girl had disappeared to.

Jaune took one more look at the situation: the giant murderous scorpion looming over the small girl that no longer had a big gun. And the scorpion was probably going to kill the girl, without much trouble. And it was Jaune's fault that the girl didn't have any way to defend herself. _Okay, conscious, let's be real here: she's the one in the wrong here, not me. I_ told _her to run, and then she started shooting at me, and that ticked off the Deathstalker. What goes around, comes around, and if she needs help, then maybe she should have thought about that before-_

" _Isn't that what being a Huntress is all about? Helping others in need?"_

As the memory of Penny's words shot through him, giving him a bit of a moral crisis, Jaune started getting frustrated. _Okay, Penny, you've already guilted me once, and now you're doing it while you aren't even here?! She was trying to_ kill _me! I'm not in the wrong here!_ Crocea Mors probably wasn't tough enough to break through the armor anyways! … _Wait, no, the reason I'm not going to help isn't because I'm not going to be that useful, the problem is that I'm thinking about helping someone who was just trying to_ kill me _!_

 _Or… maybe, it's just a big misunderstanding…? Bu-but she shot at me!_

…

… _Darn it, Penny. I_ hope _it's all just a big misunderstanding, because if it's not, I'm going to feel really stupid when this girl kills me._ The Deathstalker seemed to realize that the girl was unarmed, and it showed in its actions. While it could have easily tried to kill her, it instead used its pincers to bat knock the girl down menacingly, knowing that it could end her in one hit. Grimm were terrifying creatures, that seemed to feed on _fear_ , so it made sense that they would milk a defenseless foe for all it was worth. That said, this single-minded sadism left the monster inattentive, so that it didn't even notice Jaune quickly approaching, Crocea Mors raised. With a mighty swing, his sword cleaved right through one of the Grimm's unarmored legs, resulting in a roar of pain.

… To be honest, Jaune was kind of just expecting the sword to bounce right off. But as the Deathstalker turned and smacked him away with the back of one of its pincers, Jaune reflected that nothing about this fight was going quite how he had planned. _Wait, there was a plan?_ Jaune managed to find his way to his feet, and darted away from the Deathstalker and the girl, with the monster's attention back on him. _Oh, yeah, a plan! I need a plan here! No, no, what I really need now are more_ people _, then I can come up with a plan for this._

* * *

Roman had a certain affinity for flying. Sure, it took a lot of time to get used to, but there was just something special about moving without touching the ground beneath you.

"Roman!"

The wind rushing into his ears made it almost impossible to hear his partner calling out to him, but Roman still managed. That said, he didn't respond. He wasn't particularly thrilled about being in this situation. This was the kind of decisionmaking that he had come to expect from thoughtless _animals_ like Sun, but the fact of the matter was that Roman had, in a moment of pointless optimism, decided to go along with his partner's idiotic plan. Why had Roman ever thought he could trust _anyone_ at this school to make good decisions?

"What do we do?!" Sun's strained voice screamed out, and the implications of that question made Roman's eye start to twitch uncontrollably.

"What do you mean, 'what do we do'?! This was your plan!"

"I didn't plan that far ahead! You're an adult, right? You figure it out!"

Roman roared in annoyance. What kind of ass-backwards logic was that?! The monkey hadn't even planned how they were going to get off of this thing? _Why did I go along with this? Why didn't I know that this kid's plan only consisted of "I've got a plan!"? I'm smarter than this, damn it!_ But, apparently, Roman was not, in fact, smarter than this. _Apparently_ , thirty three years of life experience meant nothing when it came to blind faith in Faunus. _Alright, no, from now on,_ I'm _the one who comes up with the plans, not him!_

Roman took in the situation around him. There was no way that they would be able to kill this monstrosity while still riding it, so that was out of the question. Roman still needed to stop by the 'abandoned temple', wherever that was, and grab one of the 'relics' there, so riding this one out probably wasn't the solution he was hoping for, unless the abandoned temple happened to be located conveniently in the middle of a Grimm's nest, which he doubted. There was only one avenue of approach left, in that case. "Landing strategy!" Roman called out to the brat that was his partner.

"Landing strategy?!"

…

"Roman?!"

* * *

 _What I need now is more people, then I can come up with a plan for this._

What Jaune had meant by that was that he should try to find Penny and, maybe, if this really was a misunderstanding, the girl who had kidnapped Penny. And _maybe_ he would try to help the gunner get her sniper rifle back, but he was still on the fence about that. That was the plan, and considering how his plans were working out for him lately, it _shouldn't_ have been a surprise that something completely different would happen, screwing up his plan. That said, Jaune _was_ surprised when a blonde Faunus boy crashed face-first into the back of the Deathstalker.

Really, how couldn't he have been surprised by that?

The Deathstalker shared the sentiment, and collapsed under the sudden and unexpected force crashing into its carapace, probably helped by the fact it was now down one leg.

Both Jaune and the Deathstalker were dumbstruck by the event, paralyzed by sheer surprise. The Faunus that had entered the fray, however? "Oh crap! Are you freaking kidding me, man, right back into the frying pan?!" The boy collected himself and launched off of the Deathstalker, and made a break for the abandoned temple. "'Landing strategy'?! Why did I listen to him?! My plan was way better!"

The boy stopped when he noticed Jaune staring at him, though. He then noticed that the Deathstalker was also staring at him in disbelief. There was a brief pause, in which the three parties exchanged confused glances. "Um… Am I… interrupting-?"

The Deathstalker sprang back to life, lunging towards them, and the two blonde boys responded with yelps of terror and immediate retreating. _Okay, I guess I'm going to go grab the relics_ before _I go save Penny! Wait, was that my plan- Darn it, Jaune, focus! PLAN! GET A PLAN TOGETHER!_

"Why are you following me?! DEAL WITH THAT THING!"

What did Jaune know about the Deathstalker? Well, the legs break surprisingly easily, but if you get too close to it, the Deathstalker can just smack you away. And if you were _too_ close, it would probably use the pincers as actual pincers instead of just weapons to backhand with.

"Hey, I'm not telling you to get lost or anything, but that thing's a _you_ problem, so if you could take care of that, I'd appreciate it, man!"

In short, Jaune needed something that could cut through the legs without having to get close. Or, rather, someone. Someone who had swords held in the air by wires. While Jaune didn't really know the range of those swords, the fact was that Penny didn't need to be holding the swords to get them to move, at least.

"Why are you ignoring me?!"

Jaune turned to look at the boy running next to him, with a plan finally set up. "Run interference for me for a few minutes!"

"Wha- Why?!"

"I've got to go grab someone so we can kill this thing!"

"Are you kidding me, dude?! Why me?!" The Faunus looked back at the Deathstalker, and then glared at Jaune. "How do I know you're not just going to ditch me here?!" Jaune noticed that that wasn't a hard _no_ , and decided to make the wise decision to not give the Faunus a choice in the matter.

"Just trust me!" Jaune took a hard turn, making a break, again, for where Penny and the rainbow girl had disappeared to.

"'Just trust you'?! What the- WHY?!" Jaune heard an annoyed sigh accompanying the Faunus' complaints, and then a few gunshots going off, signaling that the boy was, in fact, armed, and Jaune wasn't just abandoning _another_ unarmed person to deal with the Deathstalker. "You're the worst! The worst!" The situation (relatively) under control, Jaune's mind turned back to his plan.

Penny's swords would easily be able to cut through the Deathstalker's legs. If they could just immobilize the Deathstalker, it wouldn't be able to fight back against… well, against the girl who had been shooting at him earlier. _Great, I'm already including her in the plan! Well, that's why I should grab Penny first, just in case I'm wrong about the whole misunderstanding thing._ Speaking of that girl, where was she? And for safety's sake, where was that girl's gun?

… Jaune couldn't see either of them, which was... probably a bad thing, but hopefully he'd have grabbed Penny before that girl shot him in the back of the head. That was the _plan_ , anyways.

* * *

"NO!"

"But I have to help Jaune!"

"You don't have to help anyone! You're _my_ partner, and you're coming with _me_!"

"No, I am Jaune's partner!"

"No, you're mine!"

"I'm Jaune's partner!"

"Why are you being so stubborn about this?!" Neon was _pissed,_ but she was doing her _very best_ to try to stop it from coming out. Getting angry was the first step of losing arguments, and she had started this one at a bit of a disadvantage, because, technically, yes, Penny already had a partner, so Neon didn't want to blow this by losing her temper and saying something that would drive Penny away. But still! Neon went out of her way to _risk her life_ to save Penny from that Deathstalker, and what did Penny want to do? Run right back out to go fight it to save her 'actual' partner! Penny wasn't even willing to pay Neon back by just forgetting about 'Jaune' and becoming _her_ partner! What an ungrateful jerk! But she couldn't say that out loud, no, that would make her 'the _bad guy_ ', so she had to endure and try and make Penny listen to reason. "I mean, really, that 'Jaune' guy had a _sword!_ It," (probably) "doesn't even fly! My weapon's _WAY_ cooler than his!"

"Wha- What does _that_ have to do with anything? Jaune isn't my partner because of his weapon, he's my partner because he's my partner!" _Darn it! I was sure that that argument would work!_ Penny pulled her arm back as hard as she could. "Now let go of me so I can go save Jaune!"

Neon tried pulling back, but the fact that she was wearing skates kind of killed any chance of that working out the way she wanted to, and she was awkwardly being dragged by Penny back in the direction she came from. "I didn't save you so you could just go throw yourself back into danger! I saved you to _save you_!"

"Why did you not save Jaune as well?!"

"Because I-"

"Penny! Is that you?," a voice called out from the forest. _Oh, come on!_

"Jaune?!"

A blonde boy came running into view, and shouted over, "Are you in danger?"

"No, Neon's just preventing me from helping you!" Penny gave another tug to try and free herself from Neon's grasp, but it just gave Neon a chance to get a better grip. "I'm not entirely sure why!"

"Neon?" 'Jaune' looked between the two girls, because _apparently_ it wasn't _obvious_ who Neon was. "Whatever, there's a boy distracting that Deathstalker right now, and I've got a plan to kill it, but I'm gonna need your swords for it!"

"Okay, I just need to-"

Neon launched herself over to 'Jaune' and pushed him down to the ground with a good shove (an _excellent_ display of superiority), before turning back to Penny and announcing, "This guy's not even good enough to kill a Deathstalker by himself; he needs _you_ to do it for him! I can do it by myself! _In my sleep_ , even! And once I do, you'll _have to_ be my partner!" She turned and launched back in the direction of the Deathstalker.

…

 _Ah, crap. Me and my big mouth._ Neon was well aware of the fact that the biggest Grimm that she had ever killed was an Ursa, and now she was going off to kill a _freaking DEATHSTALKER_ on her own. And she _had_ to do it on her own, because there was _no_ way she was going to ask for help after that big talk about how she would do it alone.

"Never miss a beat, never miss a beat, never miss a beat," Neon could feel her legs trembling even as she skated, and it was starting to throw her off her rhythm.

 _No, no, I can do this! I'm Neon FREAKING Katt! There's nothing I can't do! A Deathstalker? Alone?! I've just never TRIED doing anything like this before! I'm AWESOME! I CAN DO THIS!_

Neon pulled out her nunchucks and cracked them, because despite how awesome _she_ was, going into this with her nunchucks set to basic was probably suicide. One crack, and the grey tubes turned blue. The ice Dust would be able to freeze the Deathstalker, or at least a part of it, but it probably wouldn't be able to _kill_ it on its own. Another crack, and the blue turned to green. Wind Dust would be able to create a big gust of wind outward, which probably wouldn't be much help with something that huge. On the third crack, the nunchucks turned yellow. Lightning Dust would give the Deathstalker's nervous system a big jump, but it was more suited for fighting _people_ or fighting in a _team_ , because killing with that stuff would only be possible with someone else's weapon. Fourth crack, orange. Explosive Dust was pretty dangerous stuff, and it would be able to break through the Deathstalker's armor (probably). But would it be enough to kill the Grimm? … Without killing Neon? Crack five: red. Fire dust would ignite whatever it came into contact with, but while that would _probably_ do the trick if she was patient, the fact of the matter was that she needed to kill it before Penny and Blonde caught up, so she couldn't _afford_ to be patient. The last crack turned Neon's weapon black, and she very quickly found herself shaking her weapon to reset it to basic. Gravity dust was something else altogether. It was a last resort, because the stuff was as volatile and deadly as it was _expensive_. Also, every time Neon actually used gravity Dust it caused her weapon to implode, and she was getting _real_ sick of almost losing her arm to her weapon. Those nunchucks weren't cheap to replace, either!

With only one real way of approaching the fight (well, three, but fire would be too slow and gravity was just a whole _box_ of trouble), Neon cracked her weapon four times to set it to orange, and took a few practice swings. She accidentally hit a tree that was in the way, and blew it right off of the face of Remnant, but that was probably okay, right? Really, it was for the best that she hit that tree, because now she knew _exactly_ how large the blast radius on the explosion would be, and where exactly in the swing the strike needed to connect without blowing her Aura right off.

She burst out into the clearing, saw a boy trying his very best to fight off the Deathstalker by himself (wow, Blonde's such a hero), raised her nunchucks and announced:

* * *

"Hey, nice tail, loser! I'm sure it looked _great_ on your sister!"

Sun and the Deathstalker both paused at the comment, looked at their own tails, and then their opponents' tail, before four eyes and eight bloody holes turned to look at a fast-approaching, brightly colored girl on skates, swinging orange glowsticks around. She also had a tail, the hypocrite.

Sun wasn't sure what she was planning to do with glowsticks, but he was pretty sure that that girl probably thought that if she was moving fast enough, that she'd be able to catch the Deathstalker off guard, and manage to land a good hit on the Grimm's already injured face, but Sun already knew how that was going to turn out. This thing's reflexes were lightning fast, and when the girl got close, the Deathstalker just punched her away with the back of one of its pincers. The girl bounced across the ground a few times, but she recovered and immediately made another attempt at attacking.

Keyword being 'attempt', seeing as the girl just got punched away again. … Sun noticed that the Deathstalker wasn't paying attention to him anymore, apparently taking some amusement in knocking the girl around, and Sun decided that it was time to punish this monster's inattent-

"NO!" The girl shouted at him, which made Sun freeze. "This is _my_ fight! I can do this on my own!" she declared as she launched another ineffectual rushdown. When she got knocked away again, she roared in annoyance and shot forwards again.

…

"'Kay. Your loss!" Sun turned to book it to the abandoned temple as the girl got pathetically smacked away again. Did he feel bad about abandoning the girl to fight a Deathstalker on her own? Nah, she _literally_ told him to leave because he was getting in the way. If she was wrong and she actually did need help, then it was her own fault she got in this mess.

Besides, it was about time that Sun finally got to the temple. A big stone circle with a fancy design made up the floor, a bunch of stone pillars held most of a stone ring above them, there was a little bit of wall left, and a bunch of podiums with chess pieces on them. "So this is the 'abandoned temple', huh?"

"It's more of a rotunda, really. Bit of a shame that it's mostly destroyed, but I guess that's why it was abandoned." Roman clarified, having already made his way to the temple while Sun was stalling for that other guy. If it were anyone else, Sun might have been a bit upset at the fact that his partner didn't try to help him when he was in danger, but Roman, in spite of being from Vale, seemed to have the traditional Vacuo mindset of 'don't stick your neck out for _anyone_ ', which was nice and familiar for Sun. "Excellent work, by the way, leaving that little girl to die. Cowardly _and_ self-serving, you're truly a shining example of what it means to be a Faunus."

"Hey, she volunteered, I _got_ volunteered. Besides, I don't see you in a hurry to help her out."

"Indeed, but _I'm_ not claiming to be a good person."

"Yeah, it'd be pretty weird of you to say that, all things considered. What's _that_ thing?" Sun pointed at the big red block that Roman was carrying under his left arm, his cane in his right hand.

"Ah, this? Found it on the ground over there. I'm pretty sure it's a gun or something, based on the handle down here. Can't fire it, though. Thought I'd bring it back to Beacon, you know, try to sell this to some weapon nuts?"

Sun winced. Stealing people's weapons now? Come on, the _wallet_ was pushing it, but now he was literally taking people's chances of staying alive away? That's _not_ okay. "Dude, whoever that belongs to probably wants it back."

"Off the top of my head, I can name three people who want it _more_." Roman rolled his eyes, which made Sun grit his teeth in annoyance. Sun was well aware of the fact that Roman didn't think very highly of Sun's moral code, which made _some_ sense, considering it was a pretty flimsy code to begin with, but the fact that Roman was just brushing him off was starting to piss him off! "Listen, we can talk about your little moral compass problems later but right now we've got things to do." Sun paused at that. 'Moral compass problems'?! He didn't have 'moral compass problems'! There was a line between what was okay to steal and what wasn't! A neat, fine line! Like clothes, _those_ were okay to steal; it'd be kind of hypocritical of Sun to suggest otherwise seeing as Sun _definitely_ wasn't the one who bought his current get-up. … Okay, maybe Sun's point fell apart pretty easily, but…

Sun lamented that the guidelines on stealing were _way_ easier to understand back when he lived in Vacuo that pretty much amounted to 'oh well, they probably stole it from someone else anyways'. But then Sun moved to Mistral and things were _different_ there. People had plenty of money, which meant that they could just replace whatever they lost, but the fact was that people actually _bought_ stuff with their money. They paid for stuff, they owned stuff, they worked for money to buy stuff, heck, the whole _country_ , even the criminals, seemed to actually recognize lien as currency! It was _weird_ to see! And stealing money from people felt _bad_ because they probably actually _worked_ for it!

But maybe Roman was actually kind of in the right about this. Looking at the big red gun, it was pretty obvious that it was a multiform weapon, he could see the places where it unfolded. Multiform weapons weren't cheap to buy, even the one that Sun carried around was really expensive. If the owner of this weapon was really just going to leave it laying around, then they could probably afford to lose it. Just like the original owner of the weapon that Sun-

Okay, now that he thought about it, maybe Sun really was just being a hypocrite. Sun shrugged, admitting that _he_ really didn't have any place to judge Roman for being a bit of a scumbag. "So, what _are_ these 'things' that we have to do?"

"Well, 'things' is a bit of an overstatement. Right now, we just have to get the hell out of here before the flea bait over there bites it." As though on cue, the Faunus girl roared in annoyance, and there was an explosion indicating she was finally hitting it. … After about two full minutes of trying.

"You grabbed one of the chess pieces?"

"Yep." Roman patted one of his pockets with his cane hand.

"And we only needed to grab one for both of us, right?" It'd be kind of stupid of them to show up with one piece when they needed two.

"I think- huh." Roman paused to consider it. "I'm not sure. Maybe?"

"'Maybe'?"

"... Now that I think about it, it _would_ make sense to grab another one. I'd rather not be down a partner because we misinterpreted the rules."

"Better safe than sorry, yeah." Sun snatched up one of the bishops, and shoved it in his front pocket. Sun turned to examine the girl he left behind. While her hits were connecting now, the only thing that explosions her nunchucks were doing was pissing off the Deathstalker. It would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that the girl was probably going to die now. "Think we should help, like maybe just shoot once or twice at it?"

"And risk _my life_ for a Faunus who decided to solo a Deathstalker? I don't think so, kid, the only people _I_ risk my life is for people who aren't idiots."

"So," Sun mused, "I'm guessing you're _actually_ saying you'll only risk your life for yourself?"

"Glad to see you're catching on!" Roman started to jog away. "It's a good mindset to live by; gets you to my age with no missing eyes or arms! Stick with me, kid, and you might actually learn a thing or two!" Sun chuckled. Yeah, that sounded about right. Sun gave a little nod over to the cat girl before chasing after Roman. Hey, _maybe_ she wouldn't die.

* * *

 _Oh crap I'm gonna die,_ Neon realized, maybe a few minutes too late. _What should I do, what should I do?_ "Never miss a beat, never miss a- gah!" Neon was smacked into a tree by the Deathstalker. She was sure that the explosive Dust would be able to punch through the armor but all it really managed to do was crack it and get the Deathstalker really angry. So now Neon was at a bit of an impasse- no, worse than that, both possible continuations of this scenario were negatives. She would either have to run away with her tail between her legs (no pun intended) and have to accept defeat, or die trying to win an unwinnable battle. _Gah! I was being stupid earlier! I should have been hitting it with Red the whole time! The Deathstalker wouldn't be able do anything about being on fire, and now that I got it angry I can't even hit it anymore!_ Neon decided to ignore the fact that her track record with hitting the Deathstalker already wasn't that great, and focused on the here and now. She shoved herself off the tree just as the monster's stinger blasted into it, tearing it in half.

"Never miss a beat, never miss a beat..." Neon could feel it: her legs quaking in fear. Every time her skates touched the ground, they were carried by less confidence every time, her legs wobbling every time. She was scared, and why wouldn't she be? This whole thing was a mess! Neon had screwed up at every turn! She told Penny and the blonde that she could do this alone, she chose the wrong Dust to fight with, she willingly gave up the element of surprise, she shooed _another_ blonde away, and now here she was, having trouble even moving! She still had the speed advantage over the Deathstalker, but that wouldn't mean anything if she lost her balance completely and fell on her face!

Neon couldn't do this on her own, and she knew it. Well, she knew it _now_. What Neon needed was help. She needed someone to help her. She needed some _thing_ to help her. She needed...

… Something to cut through all the legs on the Deathstalker's right side, making it fall over pathetically?

… Neon wasn't going to question it. As the Grimm roared in pain, she re-angled herself to approach from behind, finally able to get a clear shot on the Deathstalker's big dumb face. Yeah, the explosion Dust wasn't going to do anything to the armor, but all those holes where eyes used to be? That was just easy access to the inside. She jumped onto the Deathstalker's back, raised her nunchucks up…

And jammed them into one of those dumb eye holes, causing the explosion to happen _inside_ its head. Maybe it was a little less elegant and cool as she was hoping, but Neon would take what she would get. The Deathstalker went limp as Neon bounced away. She turned and…

 _Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense._ The blonde said he had a way for Penny to kill it, and Neon supposed that her flying swords _would_ be able to cut through the legs. Neon sighed. Well, she wasn't able to do it on her own, and that kind of sucked, but at least she came out of it knowing she got the final blow.

The blonde standing beside Penny gave a sheepish smile. "Good job, but you needed Penny's help for it, so I think that means Penny's still my partner."

…

 _Excuse me?_ Where did this guy get off, rubbing it in like that? _Does he think I don't KNOW I needed Penny's help?_ Neon didn't _need_ someone to rub it in. But man, oh, man, she felt the need to beat him up all of a sudden. No, no, she needed some way to definitively prove that she was good enough to be here, no, that she was _better_ than any of them. Her pride wouldn't allow herself to be made fun of by some… some _loser_ that Penny found!

And as a Nevermore screeched from overhead, Neon found an opportunity to redeem herself.

* * *

 **Boy, this chapter sure was a bit of a mess. A lot of stuff happened, but at the same time, not much happened. You** _ **could**_ **say that… It's All Gone Wrong? … Eh? Eh? … Everyone's a critic.**

 **So, I suppose I** _ **should**_ **address something, before people start to think I haven't noticed (it's just like me to not let anyone know this until eight chapters in, instead of the beginning,** _ **where this information would have been useful**_ **). I'm well aware that the Neon in this story isn't much at all like the fun-loving but antagonistic goofball in the show proper. You might have also realized that her personality seems to fit better with her** _ **song**_ **on the soundtrack (which can pretty much be summarised as 'I'm Awesome and You Suck: the Song'), rather than her appearance in the** _ **show**_ **. That's deliberate. A big part of it is that a team that all gets along right away and has no bumps to overcome just isn't that interesting, so I have made Neon as bumpy as possible (Don't take that sentence out of context). Another part of why Neon is written the way she is is that we know** _ **literally nothing**_ **about Neon outside of her ~4 minutes of screentime, so I get to interpret her however I want (I say that, but watch her show up in the next volume and make this story irrelevant.** __ **Meh. It's the risk we take when writing fanfiction). Also, I've decided to cut back a bit on TALKING IN ALL CAPS WHILE WRITING NEON BECAUSE AFTER A WHILE IT STARTS TO LOSE ITS EMPHASIS AND THEN YOU ARE JUST LEFT WITH A SENTENCE THAT LOOKS TERRIBLE WHEN YOU READ IT AND MAKES IT EASY TO LOSE TRACK OF WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PARAGRAPH, WHY DIDN'T ANYONE MENTION HOW BAD THIS LOOKS OH GOD.**

 **So, yeah, Roman's being a bad influence to Sun, Jaune's starting to get** _ **tactical**_ **with Penny (bow chicka bow wow), Neon's pride is taking a pretty nasty hit, Ruby's gone MIA without a weapon, and Mercury and Sage are in Soverngarde fighting Alduin, having realized their true natures as Dragonborn. … Did I forget to mention that last part? Weird. Lotsa stuff happening this chapter, and we're only halfway through the episode!**

 **No alternate ending for this chapter, but that's because next chapter's alt. ending is going to be one hell of a trip. … Also, I didn't realize I'd be splitting this episode into two chapters, so…**

 **As always, I'd appreciate a review to tell me what you thought, and what you think could be improved (especially about this chapter).**


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